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Jabin Botsford

House Republicans on Wednesday failed to move forward on a procedural vote advancing a bill to fund the Defense Department after it became clear they did not have enough votes to secure its passage.

The usually noncontroversial step became tied up in a broader debate among the conference that threatens to derail negotiations over the budget as a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government looms. Republican leaders Wednesday afternoon moved the scheduled vote off the House floor calendar, and it is unclear when the vote may happen.

House Republicans returned this week hoping to move forward on a tranche of funding bills that they believe will give Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) a stronger footing in negotiations with the Senate as Congress looks to avert a government shutdown.

The inability to move forward on a basic step to fund the government — the House’s top responsibility enshrined in the Constitution — offered an example of just how difficult it will be for McCarthy and the ideologically fractured Republican majority to find consensus, keep the government open and avert blame if a shutdown is triggered. The House has less than a dozen days in session before the Sept. 30 deadline.

A handful of staunchly conservative lawmakers announced they would not vote to move the defense funding bill forward because of an unmet demand they made of leadership months ago. Several members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus said they have yet to receive a top-line number for how much all 12 appropriations bills would cost once passed, and where offsets to curtail spending would be made across the 11 proposals the House has yet to consider on the floor.

“There currently is not an appetite to just, I would call it, blindly move forward with any one piece of the puzzle until we can actually look at the picture of the puzzle that we’re actually trying to assemble,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) said. “I have no interest in grabbing a piece and just sticking it on a board and hoping.”

That top-line number may not come. The House Appropriations Committee already has not been able to overcome competing demands between moderate and far-right Republicans on the labor and justice appropriation bills, which have historically been the most controversial proposals to complete. As a result, fulfilling the Freedom Caucus’s demands — including passing all 12 appropriation bills individually — may be impossible.

House Republicans already had adjourned a day early in July after they couldn’t pass an agriculture funding bill — typically considered one of the least controversial appropriations bills — because of internal debates on policy that at times turned into shouting matches between lawmakers, according to multiple people familiar with the meetings who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail tensions testing the conference.

It remains unclear when the House will consider the defense funding bill — or any appropriation bill. Given the myriad requests and leadership’s inability thus far to provide a top-line budget number, lawmakers had little insight into how Republicans break themselves from the logjam before the House leaves Washington for the weekend Thursday.

In addition to political opposition, several absences within the conference — including Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), who is battling cancer — are making the math tricky for Republicans. Complicating it further is the expected retirement of Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) later this week, which will bring the Republicans’ already razor-thin majority down to four. His replacement, generally expected to be a Republican, would not arrive in the House until late November.

McCarthy ignored questions about how he plans on overcoming the impasse Wednesday after devoting significant time to discussing Republicans’ <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/12/mccarthy-biden-impeachment/" target=_blank>impeachment inquiry </a>into <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">President Biden</a>.

McCarthy’s ask of colleagues during Republicans’ weekly conference meeting Wednesday appeared to go unheard by a significant number of lawmakers. Several shook their heads no when the speaker urged his colleagues to be cognizant of the little time they have to address government funding and to help pass as many appropriation bills as possible, according to several people in attendance.

The Senate Appropriations Committee has approved all 12 of its   bills with bipartisan support, and lawmakers are expected to approve three of them through the Senate next week. House Republicans have acknowledged that if they fail to pass a significant appropriations bill — or even more than one — they would concede the upper hand to the Senate in negotiations.

“We would have had some leverage had we been able to pass some bills, but others have different ideas,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who chairs an Appropriations subcommittee.

Asked whether the government is heading toward a shutdown, Simpson said, “Two weeks ago I would’ve said no. Now I don’t know.”

The standstill again exposed the divide among Republicans <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/22/house-republicans-largely-agree-substance-process-is-dividing-them/" target="_blank">on procedure</a>. After McCarthy was able to strike a deal with the White House on how to reduce some spending in exchange for raising the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/26/debt-ceiling-explained/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">debt ceiling</a> earlier this year, Freedom Caucus members balked at the speaker relying on Democrats to help clear a procedural hurdle and on final passage. In turn, 11 Republicans voted with Democrats against passing a rule that would have set parameters for debate of several noncontroversial bills a few days later, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/07/house-republicans-mccarthy-freedom-caucus/" target="_blank">preventing the House </a>from considering any legislation on the floor for a week.

To reopen the floor, McCarthy conceded to the far-right’s requests and directed the House Appropriations Committee to markup all 12 appropriation bills ignoring the parameters struck in the debt deal.

The House cannot afford a lengthy stalemate. McCarthy has proposed several options to Republicans about how best to avoid a government shutdown. But he has yet to decide on the contours of a short-term funding bill — known as a continuing resolution — that extends current fiscal levels for several weeks, averting a shutdown and allowing both chambers to greenlight bills funding the government for the full year.

McCarthy pitched his conference Wednesday on attaching disaster relief to a bill funding homeland security, hoping to entice some Republicans. And some Republicans across the ideological spectrum want to see border security measures attached to any funding bill, including possibly a short-term extension, to help McCarthy notch a win before possibly having to negotiate the policy in exchange for increased Ukraine funding with the Senate.

McCarthy’s focus on the appropriations bills has worried some lawmakers who say Wednesday’s vote issue means Republicans must start immediately negotiating on the parameters of a short-term funding bill to avoid a government shutdown — even a short one, which some Freedom Caucus members have publicly said is not something to fear.

“I think we ought to start now on trying to cobble together a continuing resolution with whatever sweeteners we might be able to put on it to get 218,” Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) said, referring to the number of votes required for House passage.

Governing-minded Republicans and institutionalists in the House have grown routinely frustrated by colleagues blocking basic functions, privately airing those grievances in numerous luncheons across the Capitol on Wednesday. As it started to become clearer that far-right lawmakers would be pushing to attach more red-meat policies to funding bills, Republicans who helped clinch the majority, and who probably face difficult reelection fights began brainstorming how to go public and push back against their colleagues, according to multiple people familiar with their intentions. And those conversations have since jump-started, lawmakers and aides said.

But conservatives and several far-right lawmaker within the Freedom Caucus see their duty to curtail spending and reduce the debt as much more consequential. It’s why they have not shied away from accepting a temporary shutdown of the government or losing the House majority if they both result in establishing guardrails that limits future Democratic spending.

“My question for my colleagues, particularly my Republican colleagues, is when is it enough? When is it enough to stand up and do what you campaigned to do and use the power of the purse to stop this administration from trampling the American people,” Roy said during a news conference Tuesday.

Some far-right lawmakers, including those in the Freedom Caucus, have warned that how McCarthy threads the delicate balance of their demands may result in a motion to vacate him from the speakership. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has said that if McCarthy were to cobble up a short-term extension that does not include a number of conservative demands,  he would seek to remove him.

Yet more members in the Freedom Caucus consider McCarthy relying on Democrats more than Republicans to pass any bill as the ultimate failure of his leadership.

“That’s kind of the mentality that’s been created here, is that if you get Democratic votes on something, then it must be bad,” Simpson said.

“I love this institution that our forefathers left us, and I don’t want to see it destroyed,” he added. “And I think it’s headed that direction.”

Theodoric Meyer and Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.

George Washington University, BA in political communications

George Washington University, MA in strategic communications

Marianna Sotomayor covers the House of Representatives for The Washington Post. Sotomayor joined The Post in 2021 from NBC News.

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