Posted on 09/20/2023 11:49:30 AM PDT by Alter Kaker
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has a message to fellow Republicans blocking their party from advancing government funding bills: You're making it impossible for the party to win any concessions from Democrats.
"If Republicans hold Republicans back from moving bills it's like you're walking into a fight losing," McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters Wednesday. "And I've never understood that situation. So I want to be able to win these battles."
House Republicans had hoped to pass a short-term government funding bill this week that contains spending cuts and border security policies to show party unity heading into inevitable negotiations with Senate Democrats and President Joe Biden. But leadership had to pull the bill from the floor amid opposition from ultraconservatives.
Congress is in serious danger of missing the Sept. 30 deadline, which means the government will shut down on Oct. 1.
The stopgap spending bill is needed to buy more time for lawmakers to pass all 12 annual appropriations bills. The House has passed only one of those bills as ultraconservatives have blocked attempts to move others, including a failed procedural vote Tuesday to begin debate on the massive defense spending bill.
House Republicans plan to meet again behind closed doors at 4 p.m. Wednesday as arm-twisting continues to try to get the fractured party to coalesce around a government funding plan.
Every spending bill House Republicans are trying to pass was drafted solely by their party and contains partisan policies that Democrats oppose. They say they want to pass the most conservative bills as an opening bid in negotiations so they have more leverage to extract concessions from President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats.
But McCarthy and others say ultraconservatives who are blocking the GOP-drafted bills from moving forward are making it far less likely they'll be able to secure any policy wins.
Rep. Garret Graves, R-La., a McCarthy ally tasked with helping unite disparate factions of the GOP Conference, left a meeting in the speaker's office late Wednesday morning saying there had been no breakthrough in the intra-party negotiations on the short-term government funding bill.
"Take the conservative win," Graves urged his colleagues holding up the bill, warning that other Republicans are talking about working with Democrats to pass a funding extension that would contain no conservative priorities — including spending cuts and border security policies.
"Every day we get closer to a shutdown, I think the more leverage you're giving to Joe Biden, the more leverage you're giving to [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer and ultimately we get a clean [stopgap], meaning existing funding levels, and you would get no conservative wins," he said. "To me the choice is so clear on which option you pursue."
While some Republicans have suggested their party start working with Democrats on a stopgap funding plan, McCarthy is not ready to go that route.
"I think the best thing to do here is, which would make the Republicans in a much stronger position, which I've advocated the whole time in conference, is for us to pass our appropriation bills and for the Senate to pass theirs," he said.
McCarthy said he's not spoken to Biden at all about government funding.
Some ultraconservatives in the House Freedom Caucus who helped cut the deal that Republicans are trying to pass also argue that failing to unite around a bill will all but ensure the party gets nothing out of the funding negotiations.
"We wanted to tell Democrats you should either shut down the border or you're going to deal with a shutdown government," Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, the Freedom Caucus' policy chair, said on Fox News Tuesday night. "Unfortunately, now we are in danger of turning over home field advantage to the Democrats and giving Democrats power to make the decisions next week rather than doing our job. I think that's a mistake."
Many of the holdouts have been unmoved by that argument.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who appeared on Fox News' "Hannity" alongside Roy, said he doesn't support any stopgap spending bill that would "lump every disparate agency of government into one vote." Gaetz, who did not participate in the blockade of the defense bill, has been pushing for the House to focus on passing the individual spending bills even if it means blowing past the funding deadline.
"We will have a shutdown. But I don't believe that an 8%, 30-day cut would have yielded the programmatic reforms that would create any long term savings," he said of the GOP stopgap bill. "The only way to do that [is] open amendments, individual bills, no more continuing resolutions or omnibus."
Gaetz has threatened to force a vote on ousting McCarthy for not upholding his promise to advance the 12 spending bills individually and on time, among other undelivered commitments.
"Speaker McCarthy deserves all the criticism and more, because it's his fault that we haven't considered individual appropriations bills up to this point," Gaetz said.
While Gaetz has continued to point public blame at McCarthy in recent days, he has not offered any indication on when he may actually trigger a vote on a so-called motion to vacate to oust him as speaker.
Gaetz or an aide did leave a copy of such a motion in a bathroom. McCarthy declined to comment on that Wednesday.
Despite the challenges he's confronting, McCarthy continued to project optimism that he'd be able to work through them, like he did in the January speaker's race where it took 15 ballots for him to win over enough of his critics to secure the gavel.
"I'm not going to give up," McCarthy said. "This country is too important. This job is too big. So any time you have an obstacle, let's not quit."
This is laughable. The GOP regularly gets pantsed by the Democrats in these "negotiations". The RINOs are the ones that are comfortable with losing.
You pass the bills and send them to the Senate. The Senate modifies them and sends them back. You reduce spending another 5% , defund the Dept of Ed and send them the bill. The Senate modifies it and sends it back. You reduce it another 5% and defund the Dept of ED and Agriculture. Repeat....
Fauci in Tucker won’t like that.
Kinda like daca amnesty for trumps order wall funding.
you don’t win concessions.
you force collaboration...
does not the nutless wonder mcCornball get it?
you castrate them without sedation and while they are bleeding out, you offer them terms.
all he has to do is mirror the democrats... THAT is what they do...
Can’t we do Congress like playing Scrabble when you don’t have a decent word you just cash in all your tiles and start all over with new ones?
Simple solution: advance bills your party agrees to.
It’s so simple, it’s stupid.
RATS don’t make concessions.
They tell you what they want and tell you to live with it.
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