REPUBLICANS IN HOUSE BLOCK DEFENSE BILL AGAIN

McCarthy is dealt another defeat by his right-wing faction

Right-wing House Republicans dealt another rebuke to Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Thursday, blocking a Pentagon funding bill for the second time this week in a display of GOP disunity on federal spending that threatens to lead to a government shutdown in nine days.

Just hours after the Bakersfield Republican signaled that he had won over some of the holdouts and was ready to move forward, a handful of Republicans broke with their party to oppose a routine measure to allow the military appropriations bill to come to the House floor for debate, joining Democrats to defeat it.

It was a major black eye for McCarthy, who has on multiple occasions admonished his members in private for taking the rare step of bringing down such measures, known as rules, proposed by their own party — a previously unheard-of tactic. And it signaled continuing right-wing resistance to funding the government, even after the speaker had capitulated Wednesday night to demands from hard-right Republicans for deeper spending cuts as part of any bill to prevent a shutdown on Oct. 1.

“This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down,” McCarthy said Thursday. “It doesn’t work.”

To try to satisfy those who said they would not vote for any stopgap bill, Republicans were coalescing behind a plan for next week to try to advance three or four of the annual appropriations bills containing steep spending cuts demanded by the hard right as a show of good faith to the conservatives. That approach would do nothing to avert a shutdown, since the Senate has not passed any appropriations bills, so there would be no chance for them to become law before funding runs out Sept. 30.

Still, some House Republicans appeared ready to plow ahead.

“We’ve got to do our job,” said Rep. Chip Roy, RTexas. “That’s it — it’s that simple.”

Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, a member of Democratic leadership, said he had never before seen a speaker lose a rule vote so many times — three times in four months, and twice this week alone — something that had not happened for two decades before McCarthy

assumed the post.

“I don’t quite understand this,” Clyburn said of McCarthy’s strategy, before suggesting he consider cutting a deal with the top House Democrat that could pass both chambers and keep the government open. “My advice is, ‘Go sit down with Hakeem Jeffries.’ If he’s got a solid majority of his caucus. Why wouldn’t he? This is the tail wagging the dog. That’s not the way to do it.”

But McCarthy is aware that if he were to turn to Democrats for help funding the government, he would face a right-wing effort to remove him from his post.

On Thursday, the final vote was 216-212 against the rule to allow the military spending measure to proceed. All Democrats voted against it.

Joining in the GOP defections were Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Eli Crane of Arizona, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Rosendale of Montana. Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the chair of the Rules Committee and an ally of McCarthy, ultimately voted “no” as well so that he would have the ability to request that the vote be reconsidered, a step he took immediately after it was defeated.