WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders on Friday canceled a planned two-week recess as a government shutdown appeared more likely after they failed to pass a short-term spending bill with fewer than two days to avoid a government shutdown.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif, informed the GOP caucus of the canceled break at a closed-door meeting after more than 20 Republicans embarrassed him by voting with Democrats to defeat the bill.
The government is scheduled to shut down at 12:01 a.m. ET Sunday if a funding bill is not approved by both chambers of Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden.
Friday’s failed vote came a day after the Senate easily advanced its own short-term funding bill by a 76-22 margin. The next vote in that chamber is scheduled for Saturday.
“Coddling the hard right is as futile as trying to nail jello to a wall and the harder the speaker tries, the bigger mess he makes,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Friday.
“And that mess is going to hurt the American people the most,” Schumer added.
“I hope the speaker snaps out of the vice grip he’s put himself in and stop succumbing to the 30 or so extremists who are running the show in the House,” he said. “Mr. Speaker, time has almost run out.”
The Senate bill is likely to be amended ahead of Saturday’s vote, and the next version could contain stronger border security measures that House Republicans are demanding.
Republicans who joined Democrats voting against the included several of McCarthy’s most outspoken antagonists, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and Arizona’s Andy Biggs and Eli Crane.
The GOP bill would have funded the government through Oct. 31. But even if it had passed, it had effectively no chance of passing the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, or of Biden signing it.
McCarthy initially hoped that by passing its own spending bill, the House would have a counterpart to the Senate’s bill, setting the stage for differences between the two to be resolved in a conference.
But Friday’s vote dashed those hopes and left the House Republican majority in an even weaker negotiating position.
“I think the failure to move something this afternoon clearly puts the advantage back on the Senate bill,” Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., told NBC News.
House Republican leadership advised members that there would be votes on Saturday. It was unclear what they would be voting on, but the announcement raised hopes among both moderate Republicans and Democrats that McCarthy might agree to hold a vote on a bipartisan Senate bill to fund the government.
The failure of the House bill provided political ammunition to Democrats and the White House, which blasted Republicans for engaging in brinksmanship.
“We’re doing everything we can to plead, beg, shame House Republicans to do the right thing,” Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told reporters.
She scoffed at McCarthy’s suggestion that he would refuse his own paycheck during a shutdown.
“That is theater,” Young said.
“The guy who picks up the trash in my office won’t get a paycheck. That’s real.”
The White House said Biden would stay “in dialogue with Congress,” over the coming days, but insisted the core elements of any spending bill had been agreed to as part of the debt ceiling deal earlier this year.
Across Washington on Friday, government agencies prepared their employees and the public for the effects of a shutdown.
The Smithsonian Institution said it would use existing funds from last year to keep its museums and the National Zoo open for at least the next week.
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