Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is facing the most defining moment yet of his tenure as he struggles to win over House Republicans on legislation to keep the government open.
The California Republican is facing explicit threats to his gavel and has no clear path through the blockade with less than a week to go to prevent a shutdown.
A handful of holdouts have opposed any kind of short-term funding measure, preventing the Speaker from passing a GOP-only stopgap before negotiating with Democrats.
But McCarthy, so far, has resisted finding a compromise with Democrats, whose support for a measure is a requirement given their control of the Senate and White House, but which would inflame those seeking to oust him.
McCarthy has already survived a series of threats to his Speakership, but it is unclear how he’ll get out of his present jam.
“When you’re negotiating here, everybody’s king because one person can close it down,” the Speaker acknowledged Saturday.
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), an ally who helped McCarthy win the Speakership vote on a 15th ballot in January, voiced confidence that his friend will clear his present hurdle and meet additional challenges ahead.
“The three break points of the year: Opening week, debt ceiling, funding of the government. So we’re in the third phase,” he said. “The beauty for you is this will not end.”
He also downplayed the shutdown fight, arguing it is a less serious problem than raising the debt ceiling earlier this year. A failure to extend the government’s borrowing limit was widely seen as leading to an economic collapse.
“This is more complicated but less existential,” McHenry said.
Yet McCarthy does face real threats to his Speakership.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has repeatedly warned that he could make a motion to vacate the chair — a move to force a vote on ousting McCarthy — if the Speaker does not come into “compliance” on spending and other demands.
He’s not alone, either.
Reps. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) and Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) have previously voiced an openness to supporting McCarthy’s ouster. And Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) told CNN on Sunday that he would “look strongly” at supporting a move to oust McCarthy if the Speaker works with Democrats to pass a short-term funding deal.
The Speaker’s allies have downplayed that threat, noting McCarthy’s perseverance through previous sticky challenges.
“I’ll bet on Kevin McCarthy any day, and we certainly have time yet to go. But he’s in a very difficult position,” Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday on ABC.
The threats are a factor in why McCarthy and his top allies have refused to entertain one of the most obvious paths to avoid a government shutdown: working with Democrats.
“The natural state of the House, just like in the Senate, just like every legislative body in America, is you start to fill out your own goods within your own party, if you can, and not until you exhaust that,” McHenry said.
Leaders do not think they have exhausted all interparty options yet.
House Republicans on Tuesday will bring up a procedural vote to move forward on four regular appropriations bills this week, in response to demands from hard-liners about further cutting funding levels for the next year.
“The only way out is through,” said Rep. Erin Houchin (R-Ind.), a McCarthy supporter and member of the House Rules Committee.
The move does not get Congress any closer to avoiding a shutdown, but leaders hope it will buy goodwill and convince recalcitrant conservatives to back a GOP stopgap measure that would keep the government open.
“I think when it gets crunch time, people that have been holding off all this time blaming everybody else, will finally, hopefully, move off,” McCarthy said on Saturday.
Republicans last week floated a continuing resolution (CR) to extend funding — with cuts — through the end of October along with border policies. After hard-liners thwarted that bill, Republicans adjusted their proposal to include more across-the-board funding cuts in addition to creating a commission to examine the national debt. The later bill also included the GOP’s H.R. 2 border crackdown bill that passed earlier this year. It includes numerous Trump-era policies, like requiring authorities to detain all migrants or return them to Mexico or their home country and restarting construction of the border wall.
Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), another key McCarthy ally, has vented his frustration that Republicans will lose an opportunity to pressure the administration to accept GOP border policy changes if they don’t back the bill.
“The alternative is you move forward, you don’t pass the CR, you let government shut down, the Senate sends something over here that, ultimately, you have Democrats and some moderate Republicans — except you’ve lost your conservative opportunity,” Graves said Friday.
“Let’s be realistic in regard to what is actually achievable,” he later added.
But the holdouts — many of whom see the shutdown deadline as the last important point to leverage policy changes until the next Congress — are showing no signs of relenting and downplaying a shutdown’s effects.
“As painful as the short-term solution may seem, a brief lapse in appropriations (many departments and agencies have money to continue, and the majority of federal programs continue), we will emerge on a better trajectory that will bend our way toward more responsible spending and slow the growth of the national debt,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) wrote in a Townhall op-ed published Sunday.
Former President Donald Trump is providing no help to McCarthy in getting his conference on board.
“UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING, SHUT IT DOWN!” Trump wrote on TruthSocial on Sunday evening.
McCarthy is also facing trouble from the other ideological end of the GOP conference. Some moderate Republicans are eyeing going around House GOP leaders to work with Democrats and force a vote on a bipartisan stopgap bill.
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said last week that he would support a discharge petition with Democrats to force a vote on a bill to continue government funding — a move that would not avert a shutdown at this point but could help end it.
But the Speaker, while venting his frustrations, is remaining outwardly optimistic.
Asked Monday morning if he still has time to pass a funding bill and send it to the Senate, McCarthy said: “I’m a believer in everything. I never give up.”
Mychael Schnell contributed.