Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (C) walks back to his office after the House of Representatives voted to remove him from his leadership position at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, USA, 03 October 2023. House lawmakers voted to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker, after Republican lawmaker from Florida Matt Gaetz had introduced a 'motion to vacate'. It is the first time in American history that lawmakers have removed a speaker of the house. Image: JIM LO SCALZO/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Now two weeks since Congress delayed a threatened partial government shutdown at nearly the last minute, little progress has been made toward heading off the next threat, which now lies only four weeks away with the end of that temporary funding extension.
Prospects for avoiding a funding lapse if anything have grown dimmer in that time, since a small group of the rightmost House Republicans engineered a vote to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California as speaker, stalling any action in the House pending a replacement. That move in essence was retaliation for McCarthy arranging to pass the funding extension on a bipartisan vote.
Ahead of the September 30 deadline, that bloc of about three dozen Republicans, the Freedom Caucus, had insisted on concentrating instead only on the regular 12 appropriations bills to stake out positions ahead of conferences with the Senate. That was even though there was virtually no chance of having many, if any, of those bills being enacted by that deadline.
They are now saying the same ahead of the next deadline of November 17 but none of those bills have advanced since then. The vacancy in the speaker’s chair is now into its second week of stalling all legislation in the House. The House further is scheduled to be out of session the week of October 30, although that may change.
The House still has the majority of those bills pending and the Senate has passed none. Further, the House bills that have passed contain lower funding levels plus many policy riders designed to attract the votes of that group, and have been approved only along party lines.
In contrast the Senate bills are bipartisan, with few policy riders and following funding levels under the law enacted in the spring suspending the federal debt ceiling—also passed on a bipartisan basis after McCarthy structured it to make it acceptable to congressional Democrats and the White House.
The Senate now plans to start voting on its bills as well, but the differences in approaches leave the two chambers in essentially the same deadlock as in the runup to the previous deadline.
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