While the Democrat-controlled Senate is hoping to pass a short-term funding bill to avert a government shutdown at midnight Saturday, the Senate GOP leader is vowing to filibuster.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he does not want a shutdown, but he wants "to see what the House can do on a bipartisan basis."
"I'm recommending a no vote even though I very much want to avoid a government shutdown," McConnell told reporters Saturday outside the Senate chamber.
With a government just hours from shutting down, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., pitched a last-gasp stopgap measure to avoid a closure that would throw into doubt everything from access to national parks to Washington's massive support for Ukraine.
"Hats off to Senate Republicans for deciding (at least for now) to oppose cloture on Schumer-McConnell—to give the House time to act," Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a staunch conservative, tweeted.
Congress has been unable to break the deadlock, largely due to a small group of hard-line House Republicans rejecting temporary funding proposals.
McCarthy called a vote Saturday on a fresh measure that would keep the government open for another 45 days at current spending levels, but without any aid for Ukraine — a point of major contention for Democrats.
"I am asking Republicans and Democrats alike: Put your partisanship away," McCarthy said Saturday.
If the bill receives the significant Democratic support it would need to pass and overcome hard-line Republican opposition in the House, the right-wingers have threatened to remove the speaker from his post.
"If somebody wants to remove [me] because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try," McCarthy said, as he also sought to shift any blame for a shutdown on President Joe Biden.
If Biden lobbies against the latest stopgap, "then the shutdown is on him," McCarthy said.
Information from Agence France-Presse was used in this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.