The U.S. government will shut down all “nonessential” services Sunday morning at 12:01 a.m. unless Congress is able to strike a temporary funding deal — a goal seemingly shared by nearly every senator, representative and staffer, and yet one that appears increasingly unlikely.
“I feel like we’re going 100 miles an hour, and we can all see the wall that we’re going to run into, and nobody’s steering the car away from the wall,” Utah Republican Rep. John Curtis told the Deseret News Wednesday.
But as the end of the fiscal year looms, members of both chambers are racing to compose or amend a short-term spending bill in a last ditch effort to avoid — or at least abbreviate — a potential shutdown.
Sen. Mitt Romney gauges Senate support for Ukraine-free spending bill
Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah took the temperature of his fellow senators Wednesday when he asked them whether they would support a “continuing resolution,” or stopgap spending measure, if it excluded billions of dollars in additional funding, including aid for Ukraine.
A majority of Republican senators raised their hands, Politico reported. A spokesperson for Romney confirmed the report to the Deseret News. Without Ukraine funding, a Senate spending bill could conceivably be fast-tracked to a floor vote and find its way to the House before Saturday’s deadline.
But while a clean continuing resolution may have a better chance of attracting support among the fractious House GOP, it is unlikely to gain traction in the lower chamber before a shutdown starts this weekend as a handful of conservative holdouts stall the advancement of annual spending bills and say they will never get behind a short-term funding measure.
These House Republicans, numbering less than a dozen, have frustrated House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s efforts to negotiate a short-term funding deal containing budget reductions and border security provisions because they say they want to return the appropriations process to “regular order,” meaning voting on appropriations bills one by one long before the deadline.
Their demands include working through each of the 12 annual appropriations bills individually and passing them with a collective top line spending total below that of FY 2022 — even if that means forcing a prolonged shutdown.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and others work to include border provisions in government funding bill
In a separate push to make a temporary spending solution more palatable for fiscal and immigration hawks in the House, McCarthy has been in talks with Senate Democrats and Arizona independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema to include border security measures in the continuing resolution advanced by the Senate on Thursday, according to The Washington Post.
Amending the Senate bill would require 11 Democrats to cross the aisle in support of border provisions — and if Senate Republicans also press for Ukraine aid to be removed to placate House counterparts, the odds start to look more difficult, especially considering Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appears even less likely to agree to removing support for Ukraine than Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Utah Republican Rep. Burgess Owens said his party will try to center the debate in coming days around Democrats’ willingness to address the immigration crisis at the southern border, instead of Republican disagreement over how fast, and by what means, spending should be cut.
“This is where the American people will find out where the priorities are for the Republican or the Democratic Party. Would they rather shut down the government, as opposed to shut down the border?” Owens, who represents Utah’s 4th Congressional District, told the Deseret News Wednesday.
However, the state’s 3rd District representative, Curtis, remains skeptical any attempts to placate the party’s right wing with border security provisions will work in the near term, after they shot down nearly every spending proposal sent their way in recent negotiations.
“I think based upon what’s happened in the last few days, we could put any policy they wanted in the world in that (continuing resolution) and they wouldn’t support it,” Curtis told the Deseret News Wednesday.
House Freedom Caucus demands plan from leadership
Members of the House Freedom Caucus, who have mobilized much of the opposition to McCarthy’s spending proposals, have placed the onus on the House speaker to present conference members with a plan to proceed through the appropriations process.
In a letter sent Thursday, 27 caucus members, including Freedom Caucus chair Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., and Arizona Republican Paul Gosar, called on McCarthy to address the concerns holding up passage of the four appropriations bills currently on the House floor — agriculture, defense, homeland security and state-foreign operations.
They also demanded a floor vote schedule for the remaining appropriations bills, including two which still have not exited the House Appropriations committee; details of how total appropriations will still fall below a previously agreed-upon level; a decision as to whether the House will stay in session until all 12 spending bills have passed; and a commitment from the speaker that he will oppose an omnibus spending proposal from the senate.
Tensions have spiked in recent days between McCarthy and certain conservative firebrands, most notably, Florida Republican Matt Gaetz, as progress remains elusive during the 11th-hour spending negotiations.
The two shared a heated exchange Thursday as rumors swirled about each trying to undermine the reputation of the other. Gaetz has repeatedly threatened to initiate a vote to vacate the speakership and oust McCarthy from his leadership role.
While it’s unlikely a majority of House Republicans would boot McCarthy, considering his lack of a replacement, McCarthy is still walking a political tightrope as he balances the demands of his most conservative colleagues and the potential fallout of a government shutdown if a deal fails to materialize.
Utah leaders attempt to mitigate effects of shutdown
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, expressed his frustration with the standoff in the nation’s capital Thursday, posting a statement criticizing Congress for not fulfilling “its most basic obligation.”
“It’s extremely disappointing that Congress is unwilling to fulfill its most basic obligation of funding the government, but Utah is prepared to step up and do what it takes to reduce the impact of a shutdown on Utah families,” Cox said.
In addition to affecting welfare and regulatory services, a shutdown would result in the suspension of potentially millions of federal workers and the complete closure of some assistance programs like WIC, which provides discounted prices on nutritious food options for “women, infants and children.”
“In Utah, our number one priority is our families and we will not let down the families who depend on the WIC program,” the statement reads.
In the case of a shutdown, WIC benefits will continue in Utah through the month of October using USDA funds
Utah also has a contingency plan in place to keep the state’s national parks open. Short-term funding options have been identified to keep park employees on the job and gates open, similar to what was done during the shutdowns of 2013 and 2018-2019.
“Our tourism economy is also of vital importance and we’ve communicated to Interior Secretary Haaland our plan to keep Utah’s national parks open if she is willing to work with us, and our expectation that any state dollars spent will be restored to the people of Utah,” Cox said.
Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Curtis introduced legislation Wednesday that would require the Secretary of the Interior to pay states back for what they spend to operate national parks during a government shutdown.