By LISA MASCARO and STEPHEN GROVES
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s latest plan to prevent a looming federal shutdown by appeasing his hard-right flank quickly collapsed Thursday, a crushing defeat that makes a disruption in government services almost certain.
A government closure is increasingly likely as time runs out for Congress to act. McCarthy’s bid to move ahead with a traditionally popular defense funding bill as a first step toward keeping the government running was shattered by a core group of Republican colleagues when they refused to vote with the increasingly endangered speaker, whose job is on the line.
A test vote to advance the bill failed, 212-216, as a handful of Republicans joined with Democrats to stop it. It was the third time that McCarthy, R-Calif., has been stymied on the defense bill, an unheard of loss for a speaker. Once again the House came to a sudden standstill.
“This is a whole new concept of individuals who just want to burn the whole place down,” McCarthy said after the vote, acknowledging he was frustrated. “It doesn’t work.”
The open revolt was further evidence that McCarthy’s strategy of repeatedly giving in to the conservatives is seemingly only emboldening them. A handful of GOP lawmakers, urged on by Donald Trump, the party’s early front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination, has run roughshod over their own House majority.
Trump urged the conservatives to hold the line against the higher funding levels McCarthy had agreed to with President Joe Biden earlier this year and to end the federal criminal indictments against him.
“This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots,” Trump wrote on social media. “They failed on the debt limit, but they must not fail now. Use the power of the purse and defend the Country!”
A federal shutdown looms Sept. 30, the end of the current budget year, if Congress cannot pass the bills needed…
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