House and Senate race to find agreement ahead shutdown deadline

Congress turned into a chaotic scramble Saturday afternoon as lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol rushed to find a last minute agreement on a stopgap spending bill to avoid a government shutdown at midnight.

Hours before the deadline, the House and Senate prepared for dueling votes on two different stop-gap bills to fund the government for 45 days. The sudden rush of action came after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., reversed course and embraced a short term spending bill over the objections of hardliners in his own party.

“What I am asking, Republicans and Democrats alike, put your partisanship away, focus on the American public,” McCarthy told reporters before the vote.

McCarthy’s bill would also extend authorization for the Federal Aviation Administration until the end of the year and includes $16 billion in emergency disaster assistance requested White House. It does not include any money for Ukraine.

The fate of the bill in the Senate is unclear, in part because the The Senate was scheduled to vote to advance its own bipartisan bill that funded the government at roughly the same time as the House.

House Democrats attempted to stall progress on the House bill in order to give the Senate time to vote first on their version, which does include Ukraine aid.

As Senators crept towards their own vote, across the Capitol House Appropriations’ Democratic staff released an analysis criticizing the bill for not including money for Ukraine.

McCarthy’s reversal

The sudden rush of action came after House Republicans huddled in the basement of the Capitol to discuss strategy.

Some McCarthy allies, like Rep. Dusty Johnson. R-S.D., argued a temporary fix to funding the government was needed so House Republicans can continue to push for conservative spending policy without the threat of a shutdown. Leaders stressed that with continued resistance from a group of conservative GOP members there was no way to move a bill with just Republicans. McCarthy holds a narrow majority and can’t lose any more than 4 votes.

Johnson pointed to the 21 members who blocked a GOP bill on Friday as the reason why the speaker moved to this new plan. Those members “put us in a position to unfortunately pass something a little less conservative. Now the good news is this is still a pathway to get the kind of conservative wins we need through the appropriations process.”

House GOP Republican leaders cancelled the planned district recess for the beginning of October and said the House will continue to move their own spending bills — they passed 4 of the 12 that fund federal agencies.

Conservatives pushed back against the stopgap bill Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., told reporters he would vote no against a continuing resolution “There’s no such thing as a clean CR.” He argued if one passed he didn’t believe the House would continue taking up the rest of the annual spending bills.

Threat to speaker

McCarthy’s move opens him up to a challenge for his gavel. Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz has been hinting for days he was planning to file a resolution to oust the speaker. Under rules McCarthy agreed to in January when he was elected only one lawmaker is needed to file a “motion to vacate” — a resolution that calls for a vote of confidence in the speaker.

Asked by reporters if he was worried about his job, the speaker said, “you know what if somebody wants to remove because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try.”