And lawmakers don’t really know how exactly to stop it.
Lawmakers appeared a little closer Wednesday to passing yet another short-term spending bill to keep the government open, but as Senate Democrats looked increasingly likely to cave, conservatives in the House looked increasingly likely to fight ― or at least get some concessions. And depending on what demands GOP leaders give in to, those changes could still throw the Senate into chaos and the government into a shutdown.
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) emerged from a meeting with Chief Deputy Whip Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) on Wednesday night saying House Republicans don’t yet have the votes to pass another short-term spending fix, called a continuing resolution (CR).
“At this point, if the vote were to happen today, there’s not the votes to fund it with Republican-only votes,” Meadows told reporters Wednesday night.
Still, Meadows said they were making “good progress,” and he expected leadership to have some accommodation for conservatives.
The Freedom Caucus is pushing for leadership to take the monthlong CR and add military funding for the rest of the year ― or, at least, to fund some parts of the military for a longer period of time. And if leadership can’t get that, conservatives sound open to supplying some votes if leadership puts on the floor a hard-line immigration bill sponsored by Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and pushes to get it passed.
“I haven’t made that formal request,” Meadows said earlier in the day of giving the immigration bill a vote, “but certainly if they were to come and say they were going to pass the Goodlatte bill and put that on the floor tomorrow, I think a whole lot of my members would be willing to vote for that. Sure.”
Meadows said later Wednesday, after his meeting with McHenry, that conservatives wanted more than just a vote on that Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration bill, which would include approval of a border wall, a change in family reunification immigration and then end of the diversity visa lottery. But he was clear earlier that a commitment from GOP leaders to pass that bill would be a “strong influencing factor” in winning over Freedom Caucus votes for the CR.
House leadership is in a bind right now because, about two days before a government shutdown, they still don’t have the votes to pass this government funding bill. (When a reporter asked Meadows how many Republicans were against the current legislation, Meadows said he didn’t know leadership’s whip count, “I just know mine.”)
With current vacancies and GOP absences, Republicans look like they can lose only 21 votes and still pass the CR if every Democrat withholds their vote until Republicans put up a passing number.
