GOP has issues getting lawmakers to vote

House Republicans unsure of numbers as 2018 winds down.

Their vanquished and retiring members are sick and tired of Washington and don’t want to show up anymore to vote.

Just days before a deadline to avert a partial government shutdown, President Donald Trump, Democratic leaders and the Republican-controlled Congress are at a stalemate over the president’s border wall. But House Republican leaders are also confronting a more mundane and awkward problem: Their vanquished and retiring members are sick and tired of Washington and don’t want to show up anymore to vote.

Call it the revenge of the lame ducks. Many lawmakers, relegated to cubi- cles as incoming members take their offices, have been skipping votes in the weeks since House Republicans were swept from power, and Republican leaders are unsure if they will ever return.

It is perhaps a fitt i ng end to a Congress that has showcased the untidy poli- tics of the Trump era: Even if the president ultimately embraces a solution that avoids a shutdown, House Republican leaders do not know whether they will have the votes to pass it.

The uncertainty does not end there. With funding for parts of the government like the Department of Homeland Security set to lapse at midnight Friday, Trump and top Republicans appear to have no definite plan to keep the doors open. It is clear that as Democrats uniformly oppose the president’s demand for $5 billion for his border wall, any bill that includes that fund- ing cannot pass the Senate, and might face defeat in the House, too.

“That’s me with my hands up in the air,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, told reporters last week, in case there was any confusion about the meaning of the exaggerated shrug he offered when asked how the logjam might be broken. “There is no discernible plan — none that’s been disclosed.”

In the final moments of complete Republican control of government before Democrats assume the House majority in January, Repub- licans find themselves once again trapped between Trump’s messaging and their own political reality.

The president’s declaration in the Oval Office last week that he would be happy to take sole responsibility for a shutdown undercut GOP lead- ers who had hoped to blame Democrats for any unresolved spending impasse — a point that Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, reiterated Sunday morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“They just have to have the guts to tell President Trump he’s off on the deep end here,” Schumer said of Republican leaders, “and all he is going to get with his temper tantrum is a shutdown. He will not get a wall.”

While Trump said he had the votes to push $5 billion in wall spending through the House, Republican leaders in the chamber are keenly aware that their rank-and-file members are in no mood to return to Washington days before Christmas to battle over his long-unfulfilled sig- nature campaign promise.

In the absence of a road- map, House leaders shut- tered the chamber Thursday for a six-day weekend, putting lawmakers in standby mode and scheduling the next votes for Wednesday evening, two days before the shutdown deadline.“No one has any idea what the play call is — we don’t know what’s going on,” said Rep. Ryan Costello, R-Pa., who, because he is retiring, has already surrendered his office for a cramped cubicle.

“You don’t have an office,” he added. “You’re in winddown mode, saying goodbye to people and wrapping up, and just putting your voting card in the machine and pressing red or green. It’s going through the motions.”

And he’s one of the lawmakers who actually have been showing up. In recent weeks, anywhere from a handful to more than two dozen Republicans have failed to cast votes on individual bills, leaving leaders uncertain of their numbers. Some cited personal reasons: Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Kan., following guidance that Congress would adjourn by Dec. 13, may miss votes to get married.