House GOP flounders again on spending
Weekend votes scrapped as shutdown chances jump
Also in today’s edition of ‘Regular Order’ for September 22, 2023
A terrible week gets worse for Speaker McCarthy.
Senate looks at possible backup funding plan.
Zelenskyy makes the case for more Ukraine aid.
MELTDOWN. Instead of a Saturday vote on a temporary government spending plan, Republican leaders go into this weekend wondering if they can pass anything important - after the House failed for a second time to muster enough votes to debate a Pentagon funding bill. The latest GOP spending failure increased the chances of a government shutdown on October 1.
REBELS. "Congress is broken and Americans are tired of it," declared Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ), one of five Republicans to block work on the defense bill. Crane was joined by Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT), Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
MCCARTHY. The latest failure was another stinging setback for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy - who has basically lost control of the House floor to a small group of Freedom Caucus members. "This is a whole new concept of individuals who just want to burn the whole place down," McCarthy complained to reporters.
BLOCKADE. This is really the third time GOP rebels have taken charge of the House floor. They blocked work for a week in June, angered by the debt limit deal. They blocked an agriculture funding bill in July. And since Labor Day, conservatives have stopped any House floor work on spending.
CONTROL. Obviously, the narrow House majority makes life difficult for McCarthy. But you didn’t see this happening to Democrats when they had the exact same majority in the last Congress. "This level of obstruction by majority party members is unprecedented," said Josh Huder, a Congressional expert at Georgetown University.
WHAT'S NEXT. It's not clear if House Republicans will even try next week to pass a temporary funding plan to avoid a government shutdown. The GOP plan had been to combine a stopgap spending plan with a border security bill from Republicans - but all of that is on hold. Get ready for the countdown to a government shutdown to be the headline all of next week.
BILLS. Right now, four spending bills are listed as possibly being debated on the House floor next week - Defense, Homeland Security (immigration/border security), Agriculture-FDA, and State Department/foreign operations. There is no mention of a temporary funding bill to avoid a shutdown.
MODERATES. If a handful of conservatives can stop their own leadership in the House - then a handful of GOP moderates could conceivably work with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown. This option is a longshot, but we are edging closer to a 'break glass' emergency moment on Capitol Hill.
PROBLEM SOLVERS. One group that’s ready to try is the ‘Problem Solvers,’ who put out their own plan for a stopgap funding plan to last the rest of the year. How could moderates get that to a vote in the House? You don’t need the support of the leadership - you just need to study the rules.
PREVIOUS QUESTION. If some lawmakers understood the House rules better, they could defeat ‘Previous Question’ motion and offer their own plan to work on spending. That’s how the Reagan tax and budget plans were passed through a Democratic House in 1981. (I watched that as a Page on the House floor.)
SENATE. With House GOP leaders seemingly unable to do anything, Senate Majority Chuck Schumer started the procedural work to make a House-passed authorization bill for the FAA into a vehicle which might be used to vote on a temporary funding plan. "As I have said for months, we must work in a bipartisan fashion to keep our government open," Schumer said.
PARLIAMENTARY NERD NOTE. The House-passed FAA bill (H.R. 3935) is not a spending bill per se - but it amends last year's Omnibus funding bill and has tax provisions. The Senate is slated to vote Tuesday evening on a procedural motion related to that bill - with less than a week to the government shutdown deadline.
TIMING. It’s hard to know what will happen next week in the Senate. It only takes one Senator to use the rules to delay action until after the government shutdown deadline on October 1. But there will certainly be pressure from leaders of both parties to act.
REGULAR ORDER. As GOP rebels blocked a defense spending bill on Thursday, there were more chants of ‘Regular order!’ on the House floor on Thursday. Take a minute to help me spread the word about this newsletter, which offers a unique inside view from Capitol Hill. Support independent journalism by signing up, giving someone a gift subscription, or you can always just buy me a drink.
TIMING. I’m still puzzled by how McCarthy and House Republicans addressed the spending process this year - especially after they talked about getting back to 'regular order.' I fully understand that the five-seat majority gave the Speaker very little wiggle room. But that's why Republicans should have started work on these spending bills much earlier.
GRUMBLING. "We shouldn't have taken the month of August off," said Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL). "This entire process should not have started a week before a possible shutdown," said Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC). "This appropriations debate could have and should have been resolved months ago," added Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ).
BILLS. McCarthy critics want to see some of the individual spending bills on the floor next week. “Restoring the appropriations function would be an historic milestone and the first step on the long path to fiscal sanity,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), one of the main GOP rebels.
APPROPRIATIONS. Right now, the House spending process is a mess. Only one bill has been approved, two still haven't been finalized, and nine others are on hold - as Republicans may try to make deeper cuts in all of those bills. That’s not a recipe for success - as Speaker McCarthy has had no answers this week.
UKRAINE. Many lawmakers in Congress had hoped to deliver a new round of aid as early as this week to Ukraine - but that went nowhere. It presented a somewhat sour note as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to Capitol Hill on Thursday to ask Congress to continue sending resources to help his nation fight off a Russian invasion.
REACTION. "His courage and leadership are an inspiration," Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) said of Zelenskyy. "Democrats and Republicans need to stand together and stand with Ukraine," said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA). "Ukraine needs our help," added Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD). "We cannot turn our backs now."
GOP. While a number of very vocal Republicans oppose more aid to Ukraine, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell has repeatedly made the case for that help. “American support for Ukraine is not charity,” McConnell said on Thursday. “It’s in our own direct interests.”
BIDEN. In a White House meeting with President Biden, Zelenskyy very publicly thanked lawmakers and American taxpayers for their help. "I started my day in the U.S. Congress to thank its members and the people of America for all the big, huge support," Zelenskyy said.
AID. Biden has asked Congress for $24 billion in extra aid for Ukraine - but that faces an uncertain path in the House. Senators could try to add money to a stopgap funding bill, but Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has vowed to delay such a plan past a government shutdown deadline.
SENATE. We couldn't watch what was happening inside the Old Senate Chamber as Zelenskyy met with Senators on Thursday - but Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) snapped this photo and posted it on Twitter.
JOINT CHIEFS. The Senate on Thursday confirmed two more members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, approving a new Commandant of the Marine Corps and a new Army Chief of Staff. Still not resolved is the issue of all the senior military promotions being held up by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).
ACTION. The only reason the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the two others were approved is that Tuberville was threatening to outmaneuver leaders in both parties by pressing for those votes. And the wrangling didn't seem to undermine Tuberville's standing among GOP Senators.
ONE BY ONE. "Voting is our job," Tuberville said Thursday, again demanding that Democrats force votes on over 300 different military promotions - which would take several months. Those promotions have always been approved by unanimous consent in the Senate, and never by actual roll call votes.
ABORTION. Tuberville wants the Pentagon to rescind a new policy that gives time off and travel to active duty women who need to seek abortion services - and he’s garnered a lot of GOP support for that. "The Biden Administration needs to rollback its radical policy of using our military to fund abortions," said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL).
CALENDAR YEAR. Lawmakers from both parties this week proposed a plan which I've been thinking about for years - doing away with the 'fiscal year' - and instead aligning the annual government funding schedule with the calendar year. That would mean if Congress takes until Christmas to finish its spending work, then no temporary funding ‘CR’ would be needed.
DEADLINE. "Changing the fiscal calendar to start on January 1 would mitigate the unrealistic time constraints on Congress and allow government services to continue uninterrupted," said Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH). Turner and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) call it the, "It's About Time Act."
TIMING. Think about it for a minute. With an October 1 start to the fiscal year, Congress is almost always squeezed for time. Lawmakers have only finished their spending work on time four times since 1974, when Congress approved a major budget overhaul - 1976, 1988, 1994, and 1996. (Yes, I covered the last three.)
JAN. 6 TAPES. Republicans have talked a lot in recent months about how the internal Capitol security tapes would tell a different story concerning the Jan. 6 attack by supporters of Donald Trump. I watched the tapes for 6 hours - and I can tell you they just tell the same story of Trump backers breaking windows, prying open doors, and attacking police. That's my column for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
RAP SHEET. Three more people from Michigan were arrested this week and charged with crimes from Jan. 6. A husband and wife helpfully posted pictures and videos from inside the Capitol on their Facebook page. They deleted that evidence, but it was retrieved after a search warrant was served on Meta.
FRIDAY. It's another busy Friday in the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., as four January 6 defendants will find out their sentences. The cases include a man from the Virginia suburbs of D.C., who carried his skateboard with him into the Capitol and the Parliamentarian's office.
MUSE OF HISTORY. September 22, 1965. On this date, the Senate approved a major immigration reform bill which limited the entry of migrants from Canada and Latin America. The vote was 76-18 - but there were deep misgivings among opponents, almost all from the South. "We have an unemployment problem which we must deal with," said Sen. Donald Russell (D-SC), "and we should limit immigrants to those who have a real reason for coming into this country."
LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM:
The House may next have votes on Tuesday.
The Senate resumes legislative business on Tuesday.
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ABC News ran an intriguing piece of tape last night. A reporter (presumably Rachel Scott) fired a question at McCarthy after the doomed vote. He referenced some unexpected flips. This morning in Regular Order I see MTG was one of them. I thought she and the speaker were besties. He’s throwing her DC fundraisers these days. This just gets more and more bizarre.
I was going to ask why you say Tuberville is "demanding that Democrats force votes". My thoughts being both Republicans and Democrats want these promotions to happen. But then I saw Rubio's asinine comment ( "The Biden Administration needs to rollback its radical policy of using our military to fund abortions.") Like, dude, the military isn't "funding abortions." It's ensuring service members don't bear the cost of care needed but not available locally. Soldiers at Ft. Huachuca, AZ are driven to the big hospital at Ft. Bliss, TX when needed. I drove the shuttle a few times. The reason for the care does not matter. Also, since I'm a reasoning person, I just talked myself into changing my mind about members undergoing gender reassignment therapy. It doesn't matter if the procedures are voluntary or necessary. I mean, we had an officer elect to undergo voluntary surgery that kept him from deploying to the first Gulf War.