Kevin McCarthy Floats Stopgap 45-Day Spending Bill In Last-ditch Effort To Avert Federal Shutdown: What You Should Know

As the government shutdown looms large, news out of Capitol Hill suggests there could be a temporary reprieve that could avert a crisis.

What Happened: The House Republicans have proposed a 45-day short-term spending bill, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) announced late morning on Saturday. This will likely fund the government at current levels through Nov. 17.

“We will put a clean funding stopgap on the floor to keep government open for 45 days for the House and Senate to get their work done,” said the speaker. Referring to the hurricane “disaster in Florida this summer,” the tragic fire in Maui and “the disasters in California and Vermont,” McCarthy said, “We will put the supplemental portion that the President asked for … keeping the government open while we continue to do our work to end the wasteful spend in the localism and most importantly secure our border.”

Sharing a video clip of his speech on X on Saturday, McCarthy said, the bill would “keep government open and provide disaster relief for Americans from Florida to Hawaii. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

The 71-page bill seeks to leave out funding to Ukraine, which has been a bone of contention between lawmakers on opposite sides of the aisle. It would, however, increase federal disaster assistance by $16 billion, in line with demands by President Joe Biden, according to the AP.

Conservatives among the GOP members have threatened ouster of McCarthy as the speaker if he manages to side with the Democrats to avert a shutdown.

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Democrats Hold Off: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), however, suggested her fellow party colleagues are in dark about the content of the bill. “Republicans just called a vote that starts in minutes on a bill that they haven't shared,” she said on X.

“No one knows if it's clean or not, it's not the bipartisan Senate CR that Dems and Republicans have already voted to pass. Just some random new thing no one has seen,” she added.

The Senate has floated its own bipartisan approach, seeking to fund the government through the same 45 days. It, however, is also aiming to add $6 billion funding for Ukraine and $6 billion for U.S. disaster relief.

Why It’s Important: If a funding deal is not clinched by Saturday midnight, a federal shutdown will follow, which would result in the furloughing of federal employees, more than 2 million active-duty and reserve military troops working without pay and several federal programs deprived of funding.

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