Speaker Kevin McCarthy, facing a looming government shutdown deadline and intense pressure from his right flank, projected optimism that his conference can work together on potential tweaks to the conservative stopgap measure.
“I feel like we are” making progress, McCarthy said Wednesday morning, less than two weeks away from the September 30 government funding deadline.
Members from all wings of the Republican Party have been meeting in House Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s office to hammer out the differences that remain in the divided conference. McCarthy said they met late into the night Tuesday and are already back at it this morning.
McCarthy and his GOP leadership team have been trying to sell the House Republican Conference on unifying behind a plan to fund the government, brokered between the House Freedom Caucus and the more moderate Main Street Caucus over the weekend. But that proposed legislation encountered immediate opposition from more than a dozen far right Republican lawmakers who wanted deeper spending cuts attached. With McCarthy’s extremely thin margin in the chamber – and Democrats so far united against the GOP proposals – Republican leadership has been negotiating to try to win over enough GOP support to pass their legislation.
“Members are already in a meeting making some progress,” McCarthy told reporters. “We made some progress last night.”
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, characterized discussions Wednesday morning as “very positive” and said they have “both sides of the equation” in the room discussing and they are “working through” disagreements.
However, the GOP-led proposal is likely dead on arrival in the Senate, so it’s unclear how Congress avoids a shutdown.
McCarthy was repeatedly asked if it will be possible to bring the stopgap bill to the floor Thursday, but he wouldn’t commit and again dodged the premise of the question. McCarthy also said he has been in this same spot many times, downplaying the jam he is in.
“It is not September 30, the game is not over,” he said.
When pressed on his confidence level in avoiding a shutdown at this juncture he dodged, instead making a sports reference, “Did you quit before the game was over?”
He added that “I think this is where the most significant change happens… I am going to stay with it and solve the problem.”
McCarthy repeated his favorite line, insisting he will never back down from a challenge no matter how messy.
“I wouldn’t quit the first time I went for the vote for speaker,” McCarthy said, a reference to how he was voted speaker only after 15 rounds and days of voting in January. “The one thing if you haven’t learned anything about me yet, I will never quit.”
Read the full article here