A new poll from a nonprofit aligned with a moderate GOP caucus showed that if a partial government shutdown happens in the coming days, over one-third of voters will blame Republicans.
The poll, produced by the Republican Main Street Partnership, gathered data from 500 voters. Of those who participated, 38% said Republicans would be to blame for a partial shutdown, twice the 19% who said they would blame Democrats.
The new data comes as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has hit a series of setbacks in his efforts to keep the government open. With just eight days until the deadline, a stopgap spending measure will be needed to keep the government funded until lawmakers are able to advance the spending bills.
More voters favored a “clean” stopgap spending measure, meaning legislation that would keep the government open with unchanged spending levels and no policy measures, than a package that would temporarily slash spending.
About 67% of voters favored a clean measure, while 57% were in favor of a measure that added spending cuts.
Amid continuing divisions in his caucus over how to proceed, Mr. McCarthy, California Republican, said that he would bring his conservative short-term measure up for a vote next week.
That measure would drop overall spending to $1.471 trillion for the legislation’s 30-day duration, add most of a separate border security bill, and create a debt commission. A similar version of that proposal in the survey received 48% of support from voters.
The speaker pitched the measure to woo holdout conservatives from the House Freedom Caucus who demanded that lower spending levels and the House’s marquee border legislation be added to a short-term measure as the price of their support.
Despite Mr. McCarthy’s efforts, there are still enough GOP lawmakers who have vowed to never vote for a short-term measure to sink his plan.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are working to send a package of spending bills to the House floor next week that fund just the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Agriculture Department, the State Department and U.S. aid programs.
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
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