The United States Capitol. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Federal officials are bracing for a government shutdown after the House voted down a stopgap funding bill, likely ensuring that lawmakers would not reach an agreement to keep the government open before funding expires at midnight on Saturday.
In a 198-232 vote, the House rejected the bill, known as a continuing resolution (CR), which would have kept the government open for 30 days at fiscal 2023 funding levels for the departments of homeland security, defense and veterans affairs but slashed all other budgets by 30 percent. A group of far-right conservatives joined with Democrats to oppose the bill.
Driven by their hard-right contingent, House Republicans have balked at a bipartisan CR brokered by Senate leaders this week, which would keep the government open at FY23 funding levels through mid-November. Conservatives rejected the measure in part over desires for deeper spending cuts and opposition to funding Ukraine, which the bill provided about $6 billion for along with a similar amount for disaster relief.
After failing twice last week, the House late Thursday evening passed its own FY24 funding bills for three government departments: defense, state, and homeland security. To secure enough votes for the defense bill, House Republicans also moved to strip $300 million for Ukraine funding and vote on it separately. That passed by a margin of 311-117, but the considerable number of GOP nays could be a sign of Kyiv’s eroding support in Washington, at least among Republicans.
Despite the legislation’s passage, House Republicans’ Pentagon spending bill is dead-on-arrival in the Democrat-led Senate for more reasons than one. Riders on the bill pushed by conservatives — such as a ban on DoD diversity initiatives — have already drawn a veto threat from President Joe Biden. The House’s proposed $826 billion legislation is also $14 million below the Pentagon’s ask, according to a press release from the House Appropriations Committee, and repurposes some $20 billion in spending.
In coming negotiations, House and Senate leaders will also have to reconcile a range of differences in legislation like programmatic minutiae. They will also have to decide the fate of some bigger-ticket items such as multi-year procurement funding sought by Biden but rejected by House Republicans.
Lawmakers could still reach a deal tomorrow to keep the government open, though the scenario appears unlikely. It’s not clear when or how a shutdown might be resolved.
