House delays procedural vote on stopgap spending measure as GOP leadership considers changes
Cami Mondeaux
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The House delayed a procedural vote on a stopgap spending measure as GOP leaders consider changes to the bill in a bid to get hardline conservatives on board with the legislation.
The House quietly updated its schedule on Tuesday afternoon, removing a vote to begin debate on the 31-day continuing resolution deal that was brokered between Republicans over the weekend. The postponement comes after more than a dozen conservatives came out in opposition to the bill, putting its passage in peril in the closely divided House.
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“I’m just recircling it,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said on Tuesday. “We have people talking together, but we are going to the [defense appropriations bill] first.”
Republicans in the House Freedom and Main Street caucuses announced a deal on a continuing resolution late Sunday night, presenting a proposal to keep the government funded for 30 days while lawmakers continue negotiations on the annual budget. The deal was quickly met with resistance from members of their party, putting the bill in peril due to Republicans’ slim majority in the House.
With Republicans having a slim majority in the lower chamber, McCarthy can only afford to lose four GOP votes if all Democrats oppose the legislation. So far, more than a dozen have come out in opposition to the proposal, sending party leaders back to the drawing board in a last-ditch effort to get members, especially those on the House Freedom Caucus, on board before an expected vote later this week.
“My message is: What is it that you’re interested in doing that you’re not seeing here, and can we accommodate that?” said Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. “By accommodating to that, do we lose other votes to accommodate you? If we can accommodate you and keep the votes, let’s accommodate you.”
Perry added that he’d be willing to make some changes to the proposal if it meant getting more members on board, emphasizing the framework as it stands is “just a proposal.”
That sentiment was shared among several other conservatives in the GOP conference who said they’d be open to making changes to the legislative text in order to get the 218 votes needed to pass the lower chamber.
“I’m open to changes. I’m for something that Republicans can pass together,” said Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), a member of the Freedom Caucus. “I think there’s a genuine desire by nearly everyone to reach a consensus.”
The postponement may throw a wrench in GOP leadership’s plans to vote on the continuing resolution by the end of the week in an effort to avert a government shutdown before the Sept. 30 deadline.
The 31-day continuing resolution includes all of H.R. 2, the House’s border security bill, minus E-verify, other border security provisions, and spending cuts. The bill would keep defense and veteran affairs spending at fiscal 2023 levels and slash other domestic agency funding by 8%. The bill does not include any funding for Ukraine.
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This would bring spending to $1.59 trillion — the spending level set in the bipartisan debt ceiling deal signed into law in June.
Hardline conservatives have called for spending to be set at $1.471 trillion. Many have also said they needed to see H.R. 2 or other strict border security measures in any continuing resolution for it to receive their support. But even with the border security provisions in this measure, they are still against it.