As shutdown looms, House GOP leadership struggling to tamp down conservative opposition

With the House in chaos as it struggles to pass appropriations bills and a continuing resolution, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and his allies are trying, without much success, to win over those who oppose a stopgap funding measure, but they’re running out of time.

House leadership is in a bind as there is still strong opposition to a continuing resolution within the House Republican Conference. Currently, at least nine members say they won’t vote for a continuing resolution, and a government shutdown is looking ever more likely.

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“I don’t understand the few people here who want to hold it out. Why do the border agents have to hurt? Why do the Coast Guard have to hurt? Why do they have to not be paid because somebody wants to throw some fit here,” McCarthy said. “That’s not right.”

Leadrship’s job has been made increasingly difficult this year by some member’s “perverted intentions” that “have really caused problems,” said Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA), one of McCarthy’s top lieutenants.

Even after they stacked a continuing resolution full of conservative policies, including border security measures and a top-line spending level of $1.471 trillion, members are still expressing opposition to passing a measure to keep the government open.

Congress is running out of time to do something with the government set to run out of money on Oct. 1. And while they continue to fight among themselves on conservative Republican-only priorities eight days before a shutdown, they still need to leave time to work with the Democratic Senate to agree on something that can pass both chambers and get signed into law.

“We were always going to have a fight about federal government funding,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC). “That was always going to be the case. Before the speaker vote, I could have told you this was the breakpoint.”

Some members, like Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), simply don’t think a government shutdown is bad and that shutting down the government is the better option than a continuing resolution that doesn’t cut spending and enact conservative priorities.

But then there are others who are against the idea of continuing resolutions in general. For example, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) has said he doesn’t believe continuing resolutions are a way to fund the government and that Congress should instead pass all 12 appropriations bills.

This belief is held by many, but with the government set to shut down on Oct. 1, it is impossible for Congress to pass all 12 spending bills within that time frame. So, the options are to shut down or pass a continuing resolution.

“Anyone who says that we’re going to finish all 12 appropriations bills between now and next Saturday is absolutely hallucinating,” Graves told reporters.

In an effort to win over some of those holdouts, House leadership put four appropriations bills into a rules package that will be voted on come Tuesday. Two of those four bills significantly cut spending, and there is hope from McCarthy and some of his allies that this will win over some of the holdouts.

This could’ve been done much earlier in the year but a number of the same hard-line conservatives calling for spending bills to be passed blocked or threatened to block spending bills that came to the floor.

Some of those holdouts blocked the House from voting on the defense appropriations bill twice, and in July, they threatened to block the agriculture appropriation bill from the floor if it were to come up for a vote, causing leadership to punt on it until September.

“We’re in a situation right now where the arsonists are out there, number one whining that their house is on fire; number two are going to want credit that they put the fire out; and then number three are going to set up a GoFundMe site to get paid for it,” Graves said about those blocking bills.

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If there is a shutdown or a clean continuing resolution, McCarthy and Graves made clear it will be because a few members of the conference chose the “liberal option” when they decided to block spending bills from coming to the floor and oppose a conservative continuing resolution from passing.

“I think that if we get into a shutdown, it’s because there was a failure in strategy that was absolutely manipulated or distorted by disingenuous behavior, intentions, and probably ignorance,” Graves said of the holdouts.