With only hours to spare, Congress on Saturday narrowly avoided a government shutdown. The Senate approved a bill to keep the government open for the next 45 days by a vote of 88 to 9 after a dramatic reversal by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy ensured an overwhelming House vote to keep the government open.
McCarthy had spent weeks trying to find a path that would both keep the government open and protect himself from an internal coup by hardliners within the House Republican Conference. Ultimately, McCarthy opted to fund the government and challenge the hardliners to do their worst — opening him up to attempts to remove him from the House’s top job.
McCarthy had tried Friday to get his caucus to support a short-term measure — known as a continuing resolution — that was loaded up with major spending cuts to appeal to House right wingers. But after that failed, the California Republican punted on Saturday after accepting that he could not pass any short-term funding measure with Republican votes alone.
Instead, he allowed the House to vote on legislation that would continue current government spending for the next 45 days along with disaster aid. The only major provision desired by Democrats not included in the legislation is additional aid to Ukraine. The short-term bill passed with all but one Democrat supporting it. However, 90 Republicans were opposed.
For many of those Republicans, they were opposed to a continuing resolution on principle. They believed McCarthy had made a commitment to funding the government through twelve individual appropriations bills rather than a single legislative vehicle. As Rep Wesley Hunt (R-TX) put it on Friday. “We got to break the fever. This is how business has been conducted for the past 33 years in this country, which coincidentally are close to $30 trillion in debt.” He added “if we don’t break this right now, if you don’t do this right now, it’s gonna be business as usual next year, and the year after…
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