By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will try to restart his stalled spending agenda on Thursday with a procedural vote his Republicans have already twice failed to advance, raising the risk of a government shutdown in just 10 days.
A vote to open debate on an $886 billion defense appropriations bill is expected in the House of Representatives, a day after McCarthy’s fractious 221-212 majority met for 2-1/2-hours seeking common ground on legislation to avert a government shutdown beginning Oct. 1.
“We’re going to be voting,” McCarthy told reporters late on Wednesday. “I think we’ve got a plan to move forward.”
McCarthy said Republicans were also “very close” on a short-term funding measure known as a continuing resolution, or CR.
To avert a government shutdown, the House and the Democratic-led Senate must agree on short- or long-term spending legislation Democratic President Joe Biden can then sign into law. The partisan measures Republicans hope to begin passing soon face stiff opposition from Democrats in the Senate and the White House.
TRUMP WADES IN
Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, added to McCarthy’s distractions with a call to shut the government, as occurred three times during his four years in the White House.
“Republicans in Congress can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government that refuses to close the Border, and treats half the Country as Enemies of the State,” the former president said on his Truth Social platform.
Trump is awaiting four criminal trials, including two brought by federal prosecutors, over charges including his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat. He has claimed without evidence that all four prosecutions are politically motivated.
Political brinkmanship has begun to attract the attention of Wall Street, with rating agency Fitch citing repeated down-to-the-wire negotiations that threaten the government’s ability to pay its bills when it downgraded U.S. debt rating to AA+ from its top-notch AAA designation earlier this year.
The Republican spending agenda has run afoul of a small group of Republican hardline conservatives, who want assurances that fiscal 2024 appropriations will not exceed a 2022 top line of $1.47 trillion, $120 billion less than McCarthy and Biden agreed to in May.
A bipartisan group of 64 lawmakers known as the “Problem Solvers Caucus” proposed a measure that would fund the government through Jan. 11, though without McCarthy’s support it is unclear how the measure would advance.
McCarthy on Tuesday had to pull a procedural vote on a proposed 30-day CR. Then a vote to open floor debate on the defense appropriations bill failed. The defense bill had already been delayed earlier in the month.
McCarthy on Wednesday told reporters he had been able to win support from two of the five hardliners who had joined Democrats to oppose the defense appropriations bill on Tuesday.
The two hardliners appear to have changed their positions after McCarthy proposed a 30-day CR that would cut spending to the 2022 level, according to two sources familiar with the discussion. The CR would include a commission to tackle the federal debt and conservative restrictions on immigration and the border.
McCarthy’s proposal would also set a top line for full-year fiscal 2024 spending at just under $1.53 trillion, the sources said. That is still $60 billion less than he agreed to with Biden in May.
It was not clear how much support the CR or the 2024 top line would draw from House Republicans.
(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone, Leslie Adler and Mark Porter)
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