Speaker Kevin McCarthy, grasping for G.O.P. votes to bring spending bills up for debate, proposed a new measure with deeper cuts to appease the hard right, paving the way for a clash with the Senate.
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Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he was not ready to give up and seek help from Democrats, an option likely to set off an immediate challenge to his position as speaker.
House Republicans inched closer on Wednesday to overcoming deep internal divisions and reaching an agreement that would allow them to advance stalled spending legislation, as Speaker Kevin McCarthy bowed to the demands of far-right lawmakers for steep spending cuts that stood little chance of surviving in the Senate.
The emerging deal was unlikely to bring Congress closer to averting a shutdown in 10 days, and it remained unclear whether Republicans could even reach agreement among themselves on a purely symbolic measure that underscored Mr. McCarthy’s precarious hold on his job.
Mr. McCarthy emerged from a lengthy Wednesday night meeting with Republican lawmakers saying he felt optimistic that he was closer to having the votes to pass a stopgap funding measure to keep federal agencies open through October, despite a handful of hard-line Republicans who have threatened to stand in the way.
Behind closed doors, he proposed a monthlong bill that would temporarily set overall government spending at $1.47 trillion, the funding level in place before the pandemic that hard-right lawmakers have been clamoring for since January; include stringent border restrictions; and create a commission to tackle spending and debt. And he said the House would move individual spending bills that would result in overall expenditures of $1.56 trillion for the coming year, a substantial cut from the level he agreed to with President Biden as part of the debt deal reached in May.
In a sign that the House was shaking off the paralysis that has gripped it for most of the week, Mr. McCarthy said he planned to bring a Pentagon spending bill back to the floor on Thursday, two days after a handful of hard-line Republicans blocked a vote on it, dealing him an embarrassing defeat. Republicans emerging from the meeting said two of the rebels, Representative Ken Buck of Colorado and Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, had changed positions and would now allow a vote on the bill to proceed.
Still, even if the stopgap spending plan were to succeed, it would place the House on a collision course with the Democratic-controlled Senate, where there is bipartisan opposition to the cuts Mr. McCarthy has laid out and the immigration restrictions. With government funding slated to lapse after Sept. 30, it left Congress still far from an agreement to avert a shutdown.
Nor was it entirely clear whether Mr. McCarthy could muster support for his latest gambit. At the closed door meeting on Wednesday evening, Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, who has led the resistance to Mr. McCarthy, said he knew of at least seven Republicans who would vote against any stopgap funding measure to avert a government shutdown, no matter what the spending level. He would not say who they were.
That assertion received some pushback from other hard-right members.
Representative Patrick McHenry, a McCarthy ally from North Carolina, said it was too soon to start thinking about turning to Democrats for help and called the impasse part of the “natural give and take” of finding an overall funding figure that Republicans could agree on.
“The first go of it in the House of Representative is always within your own party,” he said after the meeting. “That’s what the speaker is trying to do, is build consensus among Republicans.”
The speaker also said he was not ready to give up and seek help from Democrats, an option likely to set off an immediate effort by right-wing lawmakers to remove him from the speakership.
“Anytime we have an obstacle, let’s not quit,” Mr. McCarthy told reporters earlier Wednesday as he was pressed on how he intended to overcome the resistance from the far right. “Sometimes it takes longer than others. There were a lot of Republicans who said they would never vote for me as speaker either,” he said, referring to his January fight for the speaker’s gavel that took 15 House votes to decide.
But it was that battle that was coming back to haunt Mr. McCarthy, who was still working to satisfy the same band of hard-right rebels who had demanded concessions from him — including promises to rein in federal spending — in exchange for their votes to make him speaker.
While Mr. McCarthy tried to appear unflappable, smilingly shaking hands and greeting tourists in the Capitol Rotunda, his allies were growing increasingly frustrated by the opposition, accusing some on the right of “moving the goal posts” in an effort to undermine Mr. McCarthy and topple him from his post.
“It may be a situation where the personality clashes — few as they may be, but sufficient in number to make a difference — is what we are facing,” said Representative Steve Womack, Republican of Arkansas and a senior member of the Appropriations Committee.
Other lawmakers close to Mr. McCarthy said the stalemate was costing House Republicans valuable leverage in the upcoming funding showdown with the Senate and the White House.
Representative Garret Graves, Republican of Louisiana, said Republicans were also putting themselves in position to take the blame for a shutdown despite their joint opposition to Biden administration policies.
“This is a disastrous administration,” he said. “And you’re having Republicans that are going down a path or are executing a strategy where they are going to take Joe Biden off the front page and slap their own mugs on it. It doesn’t make any sense.”
With the outlook uncertain, Mr. McCarthy intended to keep House members in town and voting at least through Saturday, lawmakers said, as he and his backers groped for a way out of the impasse.
“The speaker’s been talking to a lot of different people and he’s pretty good at pulling rabbits out of hats,” said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma and chairman of the Rules Committee. “My guess is we’ll see another rabbit.”
One top ally of the hard-liners, Russell T. Vought, the president of the Center for Renewing America, said Mr. McCarthy either needed to embrace their position on lower spending and their push to challenge the Biden administration more aggressively, or face a threat to his job.
“We’re going to have a shutdown,” said Mr. Vought. “I think that’s a fundamental reality.” He added, “I don’t think his speakership will continue if he doesn’t move to unite his conference.”
The Senate on Wednesday reached a spending impasse of its own as Republicans defeated an attempt to overcome an objection by Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, to considering three bipartisan spending bills in unison. Republicans were reluctant to steamroll their far-right colleagues and perhaps set a precedent in overcoming the type of objections that empower individual senators.
But senators said the outcome would allow more negotiations with Mr. Johnson, and talks were ongoing to try to find a way to satisfy him and move ahead on the legislation that had broad support from both parties.
“I’m going to stay at the table,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and chair of the Appropriations Committee. “I will keep working.”
Kayla Guo contributed reporting.
Carl Hulse is chief Washington correspondent and a veteran of more than three decades of reporting in the capital. More about Carl Hulse
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent. She was previously a White House correspondent. Before joining The Times, she covered the White House and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign for Politico, and spent a decade covering local politics for the New York Post and the New York Daily News. More about Annie Karni
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: Hard-Liners Stymie Efforts to Skirt Shutdown. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe15
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