The U.S. Capitol is seen Thursday, July 13, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Carlos Bongioanni/Stars and Stripes)
House Republicans on Thursday failed to advance a Defense Department appropriations bill, a stunning defeat after leaders believed they had swayed enough votes to move the bill forward.
It was the second time in a week that a vote on the rule, needed to advance the bill, was defeated.
The failed vote came after an almost three-hour meeting Wednesday that focused both on long-term spending bills and the more immediate task of avoiding a government shutdown after Sept. 30. During the closed-door meeting, a majority of the House Republican conference found consensus around more than $1.5 trillion in discretionary spending for the upcoming fiscal year. And while they reported progress on a bill to keep the government open in the short term, a plan to avoid a shutdown was not finalized.
But any good feelings out of that meeting crumbled Thursday morning, when five Republicans — Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Dan Bishop (N.C.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Eli Crane (Ariz.) and Matthew M. Rosendale (Mont.) — voted against advancing the measure to a final vote. Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) switched his vote from a “yes” to “no,” which allows Republicans to bring up the motion again at a later date if they have the votes.
On Tuesday, five lawmakers voted against the rule after leaders had already delayed consideration of it last week, prompting Republican colleagues to publicly lambaste the holdouts as grandstanding obstructionists. Greene and Crane voted yes in that vote, but flipped to no on Thursday’s effort.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) indicated he was not aware that Greene and Crane were going to flip their votes to a “no” on the rule.
“Two people flipped, so I got to figure out how to fix that,” he said as he left the House chamber. He said he didn’t have the “impression” that the two would change their votes. “We have five people, if they don’t want to even vote to allow us to bring the bills up, how does anybody complain?”
“It’s frustrating,” he added. “I don’t understand why anybody votes against bringing the idea, and having the debate, and then you got all the amendments if you don’t like the bill.”
Crane, after casting his vote against the Defense appropriations rule, said “there’s nothing” that would get him to vote “yes” on it. Crane said his vote was in protest of the way Republican leadership is attempting to pass a short-term government funding bill.
“They just keep trickling out little bills, one at a time with no plan on how to get to the top-line number that was agreed to back in January,” Crane said.
As the vote was finalized, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) was not optimistic about his party’s chances of passing a continuing resolution on Friday, which House GOP leadership had earlier signaled would happen next.
“I’m not sure. I don’t know,” he told reporters.
House Republicans are trying to find a way out of a quagmire that has provided the toughest test of McCarthy’s tenure as he tries to hold together a fragile majority that includes hard-right lawmakers eager to see their priorities, including steep spending cuts, reflected in appropriations bills.
For months, members of the House Freedom Caucus have called on McCarthy and colleagues on the House Appropriations Committee to provide a top-line number for all 12 bills funding the government until late September 2024.
Finding a solution to end the blockade on long-term spending bills marks at least a small win for the House Republican conference, which has been plagued by its ideological divisions on how best to cut spending, to the point where it had been unable to move on funding the government. Thursday’s rule vote on the defense appropriations bill would mark the first tangible sign of progress.
But the stakes remain incredibly high to avert a government shutdown since House Republicans are just starting a process to fund the government for the coming fiscal year. Roughly half a dozen holdouts remain vehemently opposed to funding the government in the short term.
The path forward is complicated by McCarthy’s insistence on passing funding measures with only Republican votes, a demand made by many in the Freedom Caucus who say they will introduce a motion to remove him from the speakership if he relies on Democrats to pass legislation. With only a four-vote margin, House Republicans have been — and will continue to be — tested throughout the fiscal fight.
House Republicans have yet to finalize a solution that would draw enough GOP votes to send a short-term funding proposal to the Senate. Failure to do that would prohibit lawmakers demanding passage of all 12 appropriation bills by the end of the month from advancing that goal — at least until the government reopens.
Asked whether he is confident that GOP leaders can schedule a vote on the stopgap measure, McCarthy said that “we’re very close” to a deal, acknowledging that holdouts remain.
But during the Wednesday conference meeting — described as a real-time dealmaking session by lawmakers — Republicans flipped a significant number of roughly 20 holdouts who were originally against a conservative short-term funding proposal that included a series of asks from the Freedom Caucus but still drew ire from fiscal conservatives who demanded a lower top-line number.
Once Republicans settled on funding the government at $1.526 trillion for the next fiscal year, Rep. Kevin Hern (Okla.) said that a group of moderate New Yorkers who represent districts won by Joe Biden in 2020 stood up to say they would agree with cuts that match that number if their colleagues could find agreement on a stopgap bill.
Several vulnerable incumbents met behind closed doors in McCarthy’s office earlier Wednesday to stress to leaders that the demands by their hard-right colleagues to significantly slash funding levels could impact their reelection chances because cuts to popular programs could alienate constituents who benefit from them.
“I’m okay with saying to the American people that we have to rein in federal government, we have to shrink the size, scale and scope of this federal government,” Rep. Marcus J. Molinaro (N.Y.) said after the conference-wide meeting as he stood alongside Reps. Michael Lawler (N.Y.) and Nick LaLota (N.Y.). “We have to be responsible with the taxpayer dollars, and we have to secure the border.”
During the meeting, McCarthy pushed a stopgap bill that would fund the government for 30 days at roughly $1.471 trillion, a significant slash to existing levels. The legislation would also include the entirety of a House GOP border security bill and establish a commission that would propose solutions to Congress on bringing down the debt.
That spending cut was already embraced by Republicans earlier this year when they passed a partisan debt ceiling bill, but it was rejected when the White House and McCarthy compromised on a higher cap.
The parameters of the House Republican proposal are dead on arrival in the Senate, where leaders of both parties support a clean extension of current fiscal levels that includes President Biden’s requests for aid to Ukraine and natural disaster relief.
But GOP leaders have yet to move forward on a short-term deal because a handful of Republicans remain adamantly against continuing to fund government at existing levels — even if their proposal calls for spending to be slashed significantly. During the closed-door meeting Wednesday, Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) said seven Republicans remained staunchly opposed. But then Rep. Bob Good (Va.) — who also did not vote for McCarthy for speaker earlier this year - said he would support a stopgap measure if the top-line number was acceptable.
“We all recognize, no matter how determined we are, that this is not a one-person conference. It’s a 222-person conference,” Good said after acknowledging that he had accepted the $1.5 trillion in spending for the next fiscal year.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) said she opposes the stopgap bill because it crosses her “red line” of allowing funding for Ukrainian defense against the Russian invasion. She has told party leaders that if they remove Ukraine funding from the bill, she would support it.
Another holdout, Rep. Tim Burchett (Tenn.), also said he remains opposed to the temporary funding bill because of House leadership’s failure to pass a budget resolution and then move the 12 appropriation bills one at a time. Rep. Dan Bishop (N.C.) and Cory Mills (Fla.) similarly decried the process, stressing earlier in the week that they also recognized that passing the stopgap bill means it would return from the Senate as a less conservative bill.
“The CR tells you that you didn’t do your job,” said Mills, referencing the short-term continuing resolution. “It’s still a recognized failure.”
Mariana Alfaro and Paul Kane contributed to this report.
