WASHINGTON — Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against their own funding bill on Friday, essentially failing to even try to fund the government with a shutdown looming on Sunday.
Twenty-one Republicans joined Democrats to sink the bill on a 198-232 vote.
Even if it had passed, the Republican bill would have had no chance of passing the Senate, which is working on its own bill to keep the government open past Saturday.
Still, the House bill’s failure showed striking disunity among House Republicans and the difficulty Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will face remaining as leader of his party.
Hardline conservatives who voted against the bill said Republicans should instead focus on passing individual spending bills for the various federal agencies. The House passed three such bills on Thursday, though the measures included cuts that would not be accepted by the Senate. McCarthy has said he won’t allow a vote on the Senate bill.
While Republicans argue among themselves, federal agencies are preparing to furlough thousands of workers without pay and shutter national parks as some social programs, such as Head Start, face an immediate loss of funding.
Some Republicans have sought to downplay the impact of a shutdown.
“Democrats are going to criticize us for the shutdown,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told HuffPost after the vote. “But the Democrats were the party that continued to keep long COVID shutdowns going.”
Other Republicans voiced frustration with their colleagues for tanking their own bill.
“If you’ve got to have a shutdown to force change, that’s fine, but not pigheaded, stupid nonsense, which is what I’m seeing right now,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said.
The stopgap funding bill that failed Friday would have funded government agencies except for defense at about 30% less than the current rate until Oct. 31. It also included provisions from a border security bill passed by the House earlier this year but never brought up in the Senate. Another provision was a proposal for a bipartisan commission that would be charged with coming up with ways to stabilize the national debt and present those to Congress immediately after the 2024 election.
The Senate efforts to pass a stopgap bill have been bipartisan, but they are hampered by time. A vote to end debate and allow a vote on the actual bill probably won’t take place until Saturday, and it is unclear if the final vote would happen Saturday or Sunday. McCarthy has signaled no interest in taking up the Senate bill as it stands — even if it was passed before the Saturday night deadline to keep the government open.
The Washington Post reported Thursday a group of conservative House Republicans planned to try to oust McCarthy from the speaker’s post and replace him with Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), the third-ranking Republican as the party’s whip. But Emmer has publicly signaled no interest in the idea and there is no obvious rival to McCarthy that could easily win approval.
McCarthy’s loudest critic, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who has repeatedly threatened to force a no-confidence vote in McCarthy, declined Friday to say if he would follow through.
“My sole focus is on getting our single-subject spending bills passed,” Gaetz told reporters. “The speaker’s continuing resolution went down in flames, as I’ve told you all week it would.”