House Republicans reject their own funding bill with a shutdown around the corner

House republicans on Wednesday voted against their own bill to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the month, as their party couldn’t agree on how long the short-term spending bill should be and if there should be anything attached to it. 
 
It was humiliating to the Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La’s barrage of questions about racism. , who pulled the same funding package from the floor last week amid increasing Republican rebellion defected and then saw the package fail on Wednesday in a vote that appeared to be already lost at the time. 
 
Earlier, the vote was 202 in support and 220 against with two Members voting ‘present’. To sum up, fourteen out of the Republicans voted against the package, while three out of the Democrats — congressmen Jared Golden from Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez from Washington and Don Davis from North Carolina cast their votes in its favor. 
 
The White House and Republicans still have no an agreement for preventing the first government shutdown in 17 years, which will occur 13 days before the money runs out. While the House dominated by the GOP, it could attempt a second try, the spotlight is expected to turn to the Senate where the leaders of both the parties, the Democrats and the Republicans have conceded that the shutdown is disastrous particularly weeks before the election. 
 
Johnson’s plan aimed at continuing funding at current spending levels for six months, through March 2025 and tying it to the SAVE Act, a bill endorsed by, Donald Trump that would make people prove their US citizenship before they voted. 
 
It was never going to be easy for Johnson – given that Republicans control Congress with a wafer-thin majority and there had been a pledge from several key GOP figures, comprised of both deficit hawks and defence spenders, for days to oppose the GOP-only funding measure. 
 
House Democrats want clean three-month continuing resolution that is devoid of any riders and all of them opposed the Johnson plan. Numerous criticize the SAVE Act arguing that it is even criminal and very uncommon for non-citizens to vote. 
 
The GOP opponents were made of some un-expected partners. Some conservatives insisted they have never voted for stopgap funding bills called continuing resolutions, or CRs and armed services chairman Mike Rogers from Alabama. , has said that half a year is already too much for military expenditure to stagnate. 
 
Chairman told NBC News before the vote that that would be “devastating” for the Pentagon. 
 
Other Republicans who switched allegiances were Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado; Matt Gaetz and Cory Mills, of Florida; Nancy Mace of South Carolina; and Matt Rosendale of Montana. 
 
Still, most of the ‘regular’ Republicans supported Johnson’s decision, arguing that conducting the vote would make the legislators public. 
 
“I think it’s good to put it on the floor, let people know who the people are that support it and don’t,” Rep. Warren Davidson, of Ohio, said earlier Wednesday. “I think that is more important to call the vote, let the record show where everyone stands. Everybody. “ 
 
Davidson, who was kicked out of the House Freedom Caucus in July, said that Republicans could not agree on a policy in the weeks preceding the election. “Some are the bedwetters who will not fight for anything” he said, “the other lot are the purists who will not fight for anything unless it is to the letter. ” 
 
Trump, the GOP presidential nominee has dominated the funding dispute. In the final days before the vote Trump returned to the polls with a closing message that Republicans must shut down the government until the SAVE Act passes. 

Thus, if Republicans do not get the SAVE Act, and each bit of it, they shouldn’t support any type of Continuing Resolution, Trump stated on the Truth Social platform, despite having no evidence of tens of thousands of illegals voting in the upcoming elections. 
 
“The only Americans who should be voting in our Most Important Election in History or any Election is America First,” Trump concluded with another tweet where he suggested; “A Vote must happen BEFORE the Election, not AFTER the Election when it is too late. ” It was summed up like this: “BE SMART, REPUBLICANS, YOU’VE BEEN PUSHED AROUND LONG ENOUGH BY THE DEMOCRATS DON’T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN. ” 
 
Following the vote Johnson was asked questions by the media where he defended his strategy, however he did not divulge for the next play call. 
 
“The play that we ran tonight was the right play,” Johnson said just off the House floor, using his favorite football metaphors, “It is the right play for the American people, the play they demanded and the play they deserve. ” 
 
”Right now, I believe we have two very significant priorities in Congress. One is that the congress have the responsibility to pay for the government and the second is that congress has the responsibility to pay for free and safe elections. Tonight this vote could have done both and I am very disappointed that it did not pass. “ 
 
Here, the government is planning to shut down at 12:01 a. m. Oct. 1 in case, Republicans and Democrats do not agree on short-term funding. 
 
That won’t include the speaker’s plan, a non-starter in the Democratic-controlled Senate and which the White House has threatened veto by President Joe Biden. 
 
More realistically, the next action will be of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from N. Y. , which came to the floor with a clean CR, which funds the government through the election into December. That would give both sides time to hammer out a longer-term funding plan ahead of the lame-duck session for fiscal year 2025, if a short-term authority can get through the lower chamber. 
 
Even Plan B has always been described as a clean CR, by Rep. John Duarte, R-Calif He said of the need to one day pass a short-term patch to deal with the current situation. 
 
The vote was followed by Schumer addressing Johnson to bargain with Senate Democrats, according to the statement. “For weeks now,Captain Speaker Johnson engaged in partisan maneuver knowing well the fact that it shall not pass or prevent a shutdown. We now have only a few days left before House Republicans wake up from this decision, sit down with the Democrats, and work on a bipartisan legislative solution,” he noted Responsive [59].

As the Nov. 5 general election is only 48 days away, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. , the White House is signaling that such action would be politically suicidal for the Republican Party. 
 
This is a context from McConnell on Tuesday: ” ‘One thing you cannot have at the government shutdown would be politically beyond stupid for us to do that right before the election,’ McConnell said Tuesday, ‘because, of course, we’d get the blame. ’ 
 
House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole told the THS audience that. The speaker said after the Wednesday’s meeting that he has total confidence in Johnson to solve how a shutdown catapulting shall be avoided, pointing to the fact that the speaker secured a funding deal in early this year with Schumer for the current fiscal year. 
 
Their honoree concluded, “He has been loved and he has been hated but at the end of the day if he ever wanted to shut down the government he had lots of chances to do that. ” “Since he became the speaker, he has never allowed this to happen and I do not believe that he ever would. ” 
 
Former House Appropriations Chair and current chair of the House Rules Committee Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat, said today I hope the conferees sitting down can come up with a clean bill to fund the government to keep the lights on. 
 
In my opinion, we will get to where we have to go ‘we’re going to have to get to where we need to go,’ DeLauro D Conn. , said. ‘We need people who have an understanding of what a shutdown means’ And I, for one, believe that [Republicans] will figure this out and realize that it is politically suicidal. ”