But it does not include supplemental funds for border security, which House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has said is key in his chamber for support of a stopgap bill. President Biden has also asked Congress for supplemental funding for border security and to address the fentanyl crisis.
Amending the Senate CR would need the support of 60 senators, meaning if all Republicans support the addition, they would only need 11 Democrats and independents for inclusion. But the details of any border-related proposal will be key, as the parties have rarely been able to find consensus around the issue.
On Thursday morning, McCarthy told reporters that over the past 24 hours he’d had conversations with some Senate Democrats who are interested in adding border funding to their chamber’s continuing resolution. He noted that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) — who has knocked the White House and Senate Democratic leaders for not allocating more money for the border — is among the lawmakers he’s been in touch with.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said the Senate is working on figuring out a “way to grow the vote to avoid a shutdown, but also to have real teeth on border and immigration reform that is credible and could potentially get done.”
Final passage on the Senate’s stopgap resolution, however, will likely be stalled by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who opposes any new funds for Ukraine and who said on Thursday that he would object to moving the bill forward through a process known as unanimous consent. Without Paul’s support, senators would be forced to hold a full vote on the bill, slowing down the process even as the clock ticks closer to Sunday, when government funding will run out.
The current version of the Senate stopgap bill has fallen flat in the House, where McCarthy has said he will not bring it to the floor for a vote. House Republicans have focused instead on moving forward on a handful of long-term appropriations bills for fiscal year 2024. Their passage has no impact on whether the government shuts down at the end of the month, but McCarthy and other Republican leaders have hoped that a good-faith effort to move long-term spending bills forward could shake loose more support for a short-term solution.
McCarthy has said he plans on putting the House GOP stopgap bill on the floor Friday, which would include House Republicans’ border security bill and significant cuts to all departments except for Veterans Affairs and Defense. Republicans are still mulling how long the stopgap bill would last, and it is not yet clear if McCarthy has enough support to move such a bill forward.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), who was previously against supporting a stopgap measure, said McCarthy told the conference Thursday morning they needed to pass their own proposal so as not to be “held hostage” by the Senate.
Norman said he expected a draft version of a House stopgap proposal could be released as early as Thursday.
Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, said he expects to see a continuing resolution on the House floor Friday that would cut spending to the levels set by the House GOP-approved “Limit Save Grow Act,” which the chamber passed in April.
While Good said he would support a continuing resolution put forth by McCarthy, he lamented the slow pace in which Republicans have moved on long-term appropriations wills, calling it a “failure of leadership.”
McCarthy has been thwarted from passing a competing continuing resolution to the Senate’s plan over objections from hard-liners in his conference. They want to advance 12 individual long-term spending bills, that fund a variety of government departments, and have said they were promised that process by McCarthy in January as he tried to earn the speaker’s gavel.
At least one of those holdouts on Thursday morning said he was still a no vote on a stopgap bill.
“Nothing ever gets settled in a meeting like this,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) told reporters outside the Capitol Hill Club, where House Republicans were meeting. “Everybody puffs up, and everybody does their thing.”
House Republicans are expected late Thursday to pass two of those appropriations bills — Homeland Security and Defense. But they may be unable to pass a bill to fund the Agriculture Department due to divisions among Republicans over abortion policies included in the proposal.
Funding for Ukraine also remains a sticking point for House Republicans. The supplemental funding in the Senate CR faces opposition, and so does any inclusion in long-term spending bills.
Late Wednesday night, the House Rules Committee stripped $300 million from the Department of Defense appropriations bill to get the legislation passed in a move meant to win over Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has said her vote is contingent on no funding for Ukraine.
The money for Ukraine will now move alongside the funding bill as a separate up-down vote.
Eli Tan contributed reporting.
