The House voted against beginning debate on its annual defense appropriations bill, failing to overcome a key procedural hurdle to advance the must-pass legislation through the lower chamber by the end of this week.
Lawmakers voted 212-214 to begin consideration of the $826 billion spending bill, falling short of the majority vote needed to kick-start debate on more than 180 amendments lawmakers are seeking to attach to the funding bill. The vote deals a blow to GOP leaders who hoped to get the legislation through the lower chamber by the end of this week with just seven legislative days left before the Sept. 30 deadline.
HERE ARE THE HOUSE REPUBLICANS WHO HAVE PLEDGED TO VOTE NO ON STOPGAP SPENDING MEASURE
Five Republicans voted to sink the measure, including Reps. Ralph Norman (R-SC), Dan Bishop (R-NC), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Ken Buck (R-CO), and Matt Rosendale (R-MT).
The vote throws a wrench in lawmakers’ plans to get all 12 appropriations bills through Congress by the end of the month to avert a government shutdown. The House has only passed one of its appropriations bills, while the Senate is still working to get a spending bill on the floor for a vote.
GOP leaders have been working for weeks to shore up enough support for the defense appropriations bill, even agreeing to several culture war amendments that target Pentagon policies on abortion and LGBT matters to win key holdout votes. However, those efforts were complicated last week when House leaders postponed the initial rules votes.
The House was originally scheduled to vote on the Defense Appropriations Act last Wednesday, but the legislation was later pulled from the schedule due to a lack of support among hard-line conservatives who sought to use their votes as leverage for other legislation. Among the holdouts’ demands was a vote on border legislation, as well as slashed funding for “woke policies” in the Pentagon, among other things.
GOP leaders on the House Freedom Caucus and Main Street Caucus were able to hash out a deal over the weekend that included some of those demands, hoping to ease enough concern to get a temporary continuing resolution and the defense spending bill through the lower chamber by the end of the week. Many of the same lawmakers who opposed the DOD bill came out against the proposed continuing resolution, making it unclear whether the bills could muster enough support to get through the House.
However, McCarthy told reporters on Monday both pieces of legislation would be brought up for a vote “regardless” of where the whip count stood ahead of the vote. The speaker expressed frustration with the conservatives after the vote failed on Tuesday, arguing their reasoning “doesn’t make sense.”
“They’re voting against even bringing the bill up to have a discussion about it. … The idea that you vote against a rule to even bring it up doesn’t make sense,” McCarthy said. “I haven’t heard one complaint from one member about what’s in the bill. We’ve got more than 170 amendments. We’ll just have to keep working at it. I can’t understand [why] five would want to stop it.”
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Congress has until Sept. 30 to pass the budget for the next fiscal year, after which the government will run out of money and shut down until a deal is made. By then, lawmakers must advance 12 individual appropriations bills in each chamber before sending their final product to the president’s desk for approval, setting the stage for an arduous process as House Republicans and Senate Democrats disagree on topline spending numbers.
It’s not clear when the House plans to reconvene to vote on the legislation, throwing the House into uncertainty as GOP leaders scramble to unify their party.
