Missed it by that much
Image: Get Smart/NBC Films
On Saturday, Congress approved a bipartisan stopgap funding bill to temporarily avoid a government shutdown. It was signed into law by President Biden roughly half-an-hour before the midnight deadline.
🏛️🕚 How we got here: Earlier in the day, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told fellow Republican lawmakers that he planned to reverse course and support bipartisan legislation in the Senate to temporarily keep the government open for 45 more days.
McCarthy’s announcement came after weeks of unsuccessful attempts to pass a reduced federal budget that all House Republicans could agree on. It also carried one stipulation: the House’s stopgap funding bill wouldn’t include $6 billion in aid to Ukraine, a measure many Republicans support and many Democrats oppose.
- After receiving McCarthy’s proposal, House Democrats deliberated for several hours over whether to accept the elimination of Ukraine aid, during which time Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) pulled a fire alarm.
- Bowman claims the incident was accidental, while Republicans accused him of stalling to give the Senate time to pass its own stopgap measure with Ukraine aid included (which ultimately failed).
The House eventually voted 335-91 to pass McCarthy’s stopgap funding bill, with all but one Democrat voting in favor and nearly half of Republicans voting against. Several hours later, the Senate approved the legislation by an 88-9 margin.
👀 Looking ahead… The measure signed into law by President Biden will fund the federal government through November 17, setting up another showdown over the 2024 budget just ahead of Thanksgiving.
- Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), part of a group of House Republicans pushing for a smaller federal budget, said yesterday he intends to call a vote to remove McCarthy as House Speaker over his support for the stopgap funding bill.
📊 Flash poll: Do you agree with House Speaker McCarthy’s decision to cut $6 billion in Ukrainian aid from the stopgap government funding bill?
See a 360° view of what media pundits are saying →
Sprinkles from the Left
- Some commentators argue that while a government shutdown may have been avoided this time, the extreme-right wing of the GOP will continue to hold Congress hostage with little regard for the wishes of the American public.
- Others contend that House Republicans’ decision to forgo additional aid to Ukraine threatens to undermine what could yet become America’s greatest moral and strategic foreign policy success in decades.
- “The GOP’s arsonists lost on the shutdown, but they’re not going away” –E.J. Dionne Jr., WaPo
- “In tying government shutdown to cutting aid for Ukraine, MAGA Republicans put America last” –Trudy Rubin, Philadelphia Inquirer
- “Shutdown avoided, but this is still a historically unproductive Congress” –Harry Enten, CNN
Sprinkles from the Right
- Some commentators argue that any House Republicans who vote to oust Speaker McCarthy for avoiding a government shutdown via bipartisan compromise would be handing Democrats a big win in the court of public opinion.
- Others contend that the stopgap funding bill represents a new phase of McCarthy’s speakership, in which he can no longer pretend his approach to running the House is not at odds with the approach that a portion of the House Freedom Caucus wants to see.
- “Matt Gaetz: ‘Biden’s Favorite Republican’” –WSJ Editorial Board
- “Why the Latest Continuing Resolution Changed More Than You Might Think” –Yuval Levin, National Review
- “Jamaal Bowman's obstruction of Congress is a crime, perhaps three times over” –Tiana Lowe Doescher, Washington Examiner
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