A faction of House conservatives on Thursday again torpedoed the annual bill to fund the Pentagon, embarrassing Speaker Kevin McCarthy who said he was confident he had the votes to advance the legislation.
This is the second time this week that Republican lawmakers blocked the defense spending bill from going to a debate on the House floor.
It was another setback for Mr. McCarthy as he tried to wrangle his Republicans to pass annual spending bills and a stopgap funding bill to avoid a partial government shutdown on Sept. 30.
After hours of negotiations within the speaker’s office, leadership announced that there were no more votes set for Thursday, and likely no more votes for the rest of the week.
Mr. McCarthy, California Republican, said after an hours-long conference meeting Wednesday night that he had flipped two GOP lawmakers who helped sink the Defense spending bill. Those two GOP lawmakers did flip in favor of the bill, but others replaced them.
The bill, one of a dozen annual spending bills needed to fund the federal government, failed by a 212-216 vote, with six Republicans joining all Democrats in voting against the measure.
The GOP lawmakers that defied Mr. McCarthy included: Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Tom Cole of Oklahoma, Eli Crane of Arizona, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Rosendale of Montana.
Mr. Cole, the Rules Committee chair, voted no in a procedural move that will allow the GOP to bring up the measure again.
Mr. Bishop, a member of the House Freedom Caucus who had voted against the rule earlier this week, said that it should have been no surprise that he was not in favor of advancing the bill.
He and other members of the Freedom Caucus are demanding a top line number for overall spending at $1.471 trillion — a number that Mr. McCarthy pitched in a stopgap spending measure to win support from the Freedom Caucus.
Mr. Bishop said that it only gets harder for leadership to keep pushing forward after continued failures.
“If you’re the person who’s failed 10 times, you’ve got to be the person to come forward with something constructive saying, ’here’s how we’re going to do it. And here’s how you can count on it and rely on it,’” Mr. Bishop said.
Ms. Greene said on social media that her vote against the rule was because of Ukraine funding in the defense bill.
“Our Defense bill should not fund our DOD for blood money for the Ukraine war, that’s why I’m a NO,” she posted on X. “What did we get out of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan?”
The latest failure to advance the defense measure throws a wrench in Mr. McCarthy’s plan to move on other spending bills ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government for fiscal 2024. It also could spell doom for support of a stopgap spending measure that will be needed to keep the government open beyond the deadline.
Mr. McCarthy pitched a new plan for a short-term measure to lawmakers in a closed-door meeting Wednesday night that would set overall spending at $1.471 trillion for the duration of the 30-day measure. It would include the Secure the Border Act, minus the E-Verify provision, and launch a debt commission.
The top House Republican’s proposal builds off a previous stopgap measure hashed out between the moderate Main Street Republican Caucus and the Freedom Caucus. But it goes further with the spending levels during the duration of the measure and afterward — lawmakers are expecting the top line overall spending would be set at $1.562 trillion for the upcoming fiscal year.
Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, who opposed the first stopgap measure, found that Mr. McCarthy’s proposal was more appealing because of the spending levels.
“Of the two options, I’ll take this all day long,” Mr. Norman told The Washington Times.
But he said that “we’ll see” when it comes to other holdouts supporting the measure.
One of those holdouts is Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee. He estimated that there were at least five or six other lawmakers who would not support one.
Mr. Burchett said that he does not want a shutdown, but can’t support a short-term measure because it continues the status quo in Washington.
“It’s like telling somebody that is on heroin ’I’m gonna give you more heroin to get you off heroin,’” Mr. Burchett said. “I’m gonna give you another CR. We’ve gone down this road many times since the ’70s. We’re gonna keep passing the CR and guess what? We’re gonna pass another CR.”
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
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