September 30, 2023
A government shutdown early morning surprise!
The House just passed a bill to temporarily keep the government open.
The final vote was – 335-91.
This is what’s called a clean continuing resolution that would keep the government open until November 17th, would keep the FAA authorized, keep government spending levels status quo and would add money for FEMA to respond to natural disasters but would not include any funding for Ukraine. It also does not include the strict border policies or serious budget cuts the republicans have been fighting for.
This bill is now on its way to the senate for a vote and it is likely that it will pass that chamber too.
But how this happened is going to lead to some serious fall out. Early this morning with no options left to get his entire Republican conference on board with a conservative proposal to keep the government open and only hours left until a government shutdown…House Speaker McCarthy went to Democrats and asked them to consider voting for this bill. The rub was – after weeks of the Speaker saying he would not consult with Democrats on this plan at all – he presented the proposal this morning and said they had to vote on it – like right now. When as part of the deal he made to become Speaker – he’s supposed to give members 72 hours to read legislation before it goes up for a vote. McCarthy said he didn’t see a problem with giving members only a few hours to read the bill because he said it was a “simple” 70-page bill.
Not to complicate things –but the far-right republicans have said that if McCarthy works with Democrats on this they will file a motion to remove him as Speaker…so there are a lot of moving parts right now.
Will McCarthy’s speakership be on the line? How long is it going to take the Senate to pass this bill? Will it happen before the government shuts down? We’ll have to see.
