House Speaker Kevin McCarthy aims to bring a stopgap spending bill filled with conservative priorities to the floor by the end of the week in a move to give lawmakers more time to work on spending bills.
The lower chamber finally passed a group of four spending bills through a procedural hurdle after a pair of false starts last week.
Mr. McCarthy, California Republican, said that a stopgap bill could be ready for a vote by Thursday, but “probably on Friday,” because the four spending bills — which includes legislation to fund the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the USDA, and the State Department and foreign operations — were ready for the House floor.
The deadline to fund the government is midnight on Saturday.
The top House Republican said that he planned to bring to the stopgap bill that he pitched in a conference meeting last week. That legislation includes a slash in overall spending to $1.471 trillion for its 30-day duration, most of the Secure the Border Act and the creation of a debt commission.
Leadership crafted that stopgap bill to appease holdouts from the House Freedom Caucus, but a contingent of lawmakers have remained steadfast in vowing never to vote for a stopgap bill.
Mr. McCarthy dared Republicans to stand against the stopgap bill.
“I don’t understand how a Republican is going to sit and support what is currently happening on the border and defend President Biden on keeping the border wide open,” Mr. McCarthy said. “I don’t understand how someone can do that.”
Mr. McCarthy again put the onus of a shutdown on the Biden administration’s U.S.-Mexico border policies, and pressed for a meeting with Mr. Biden.
“All the president has to do is call us up. Let’s go sit down and get this done before the end of the week,” Mr. McCarthy said.
Meanwhile, the Senate has made moves to leapfrog the lower chamber by revealing its version of a stopgap bill. The Senate’s stopgap includes Ukraine and disaster spending, overall spending at the current fiscal year levels, and no border security provisions.
That measure would also last until Nov. 17.
The duration of the bill might be attractive to House Republicans, but Ukraine funding and no border provisions are nonstarters for conservatives.
Mr. McCarthy was dismissive of the Senate’s newly unveiled stopgap bill, which passed its first procedural hurdle Tuesday but has not been advanced by the upper chamber.
“Have they passed that?” Mr. McCarthy said. “All right — ask me when they pass it.”
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.