September 29, 2023
A vote to keep the government open temporarily just failed in the House of Representatives. At this point – it’s not a matter of *if* the government is going to shutdown…but for how long it will shut down.
This vote going down (198-232) is a major blow to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy who proposed the plan which included spending cuts, new harsher border policies and would have kept the government open for 30 more days.
The no votes didn’t just come from the Democrats. We already knew they were going to vote no because this bill did not include one of the things they wanted. The problem was the 21 Republicans who voted no on the bill. That’s a spectacular loss for McCarthy.
But if you’ve been following me you already knew this bill would fail… but no one expected it would fail by that much.
So now what? Well – we don’t know. The House Republicans are meeting this afternoon to see if they can find a way forward. This morning McCarthy said working with Democrats to cut a deal would be a “surrender” and he’s not ready to that. The issue with that mentality is as I’ve said multiple times… in a divided government where the House is controlled by Republicans and the Senate and White House are controlled by Democrats *everyone* has to work together in a bipartisan way to get anything done. The issue is these same republicans who voted no in this bill have said if McCarthy works with Democrats on this – they will make a motion to remove him as Speaker.
If there is no deal between the House and Senate by midnight tomorrow, the government will shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Sunday.
