Republican US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has rejected a stopgap funding bill advancing in the Senate, bringing Washington closer to its fourth partial shutdown of the US government in a decade in just four days.
That would lead to the furlough of hundreds of thousands of federal workers and the suspension of a wide range of government services, from economic data releases to nutrition benefits, until Congress manages to pass a funding bill that President Joe Biden, a Democrat, would sign into law.
The Senate plan, which had advanced on a wide bipartisan margin, would fund the government through November 17, giving legislators more time to agree on funding levels for the full fiscal year beginning October 1.
McCarthy’s House of Representatives was focusing its efforts on trying to agree on more of the 12 separate full-year funding bills, of which they have so far passed one.
“I don’t see the support in the House” for the Senate plan, McCarthy said, though the bill has the support of Senate Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“The president should step in and do something about it; otherwise the government will shut down,” McCarthy said.
The House was expected to vote late into the night on amendments to specific funding bills, though even if all four of those bills were to be signed into law by Saturday, on their own they would not be enough to prevent a partial government shutdown.
Weeks ago, Biden urged Congress to pass a short-term extension of fiscal 2023 spending, along with emergency aid to help state and local governments cope with natural disasters and help Ukraine.
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