House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellMark Makela/Reuters
- GOP leadership introduced a bil on Tuesday to extend the deadline for a government shutdown until February 16.
- But the bill is facing blowback from Republican lawmakers in both the House and Senate, and does not appear to have enough votes to pass.
- The deadline for a shutdown is the end of Friday.
The Republican bill designed to fund the government and avoid a shutdown on Friday is quickly unraveling less than 48 hours before the deadline.
GOP members in both the House and Senate are criticizing the leadership’s plan to pass a short-term continuing resolution (CR) that would keep the government open until February 16. The CR also includes a six-year extension of funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
In the House, the conservative House Freedom Caucus is holding out for changes to the CR, including immigration reform promises and an extension to the length of military funding beyond February.
So far, the leadership has not given in to these demands, and the roughly 30 members in the Freedom Caucus withholding their votes puts the House vote in danger.
A source close to the Freedom Caucus told Business Insider that “there are still not enough votes for Republicans to get to 218 in the House,” the number needed to pass the bill.
Senate chances of passing the bill
In the Senate, the situation may be even more dire. Republicans already need at least 10 Democrats to vote for the CR to avoid a filibuster since Sen. John McCain has still not returned from Arizona where he was receiving treatment for a brain tumor.
Already, three GOP senators said they are against the bill. Sens. Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina announced they are planning to vote “no” on the bill in the House due to concerns over the CR’s uncertainty as it pertains to military funding.
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky also confirmed to Business Insider that he would vote “no” on the funding bill as constructed.
Additionally, according to Seung Min Kim at Politico, a spokesperson for Sen. Mike Lee seemed to leave the door open for a “no vote.”
“Past performance is not a guarantee of future results but Sen. Lee has never voted for a CR,” said Lee’s spokesperson Conn Carroll.
When asked about Lee’s vote, Carroll told Business Insider, “the quote speaks for itself.”
Even Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the third-highest ranking GOP senator, said the current plan is in danger.
“I’m concerned that we, yeah, we may not have 60 votes in the Senate,” Thune told Politico on Thursday.
A possible lifeline to avoid a shutdown could come in the form of an even shorter-term CR, to give the leadership from both parties more time to work out a robust deal on funding, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and immigration.
During an interview alongside independent Sen. Angus King of Maine on CNN, Rounds agreed that a CR that lasts a few days to come to a broader funding agreement would be acceptable.
“If they came to us and said, ‘OK, we’ve got a deal, here are the terms, we need five days in order to do the paperwork,’ I think both of us would go along with that,” King said, with Rounds concurring.
The official deadline to pass a bill is at midnight as Friday turns to Saturday.
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