Congress Races to Avoid a Shutdown As House Democrats Help Pass Stopgap Bill

WASHINGTON — Congress rushed on Saturday to avert a government shutdown that was just hours away as the House, in a stunning turnabout, approved a stopgap plan to keep the federal government open into mid-November and sent it to the Senate for quick consideration.

In a rapid-fire sequence of events on Capitol Hill, a coalition of House Democrats and Republicans voted to pass a plan that would keep money flowing to government agencies and provide billions of dollars for disaster recovery efforts. The bill did not include money for Ukraine despite a push for it by the White House and members of both parties in the Senate, but House Democrats embraced the plan anyway, seeing it as the most expedient way to avoid widespread government disruption.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., outlined the proposal for his membership in a closed-door meeting Saturday morning and then rushed to get it on the floor, drawing complaints from Democrats that he was trying to push through a 71-page bill without sufficient scrutiny.

However, Democrats did not want to be put in a position where Republicans could accuse them of putting U.S. aid to Ukraine ahead of keeping government agencies open and paying 2 million members of the military and 1.5 million federal employees.

The measure was approved on a vote of 335-91, with 209 Democrats and 126 Republicans voting in favor and 90 Republicans and one Democrat in opposition.

The outcome could pose difficulties for McCarthy, as a far-right faction had threatened to try to oust him from the speakership if he worked with Democrats to keep the government open.

But after a failed effort Friday to win enough Republican votes to avoid a shutdown, McCarthy was out of choices.

The House adjourned immediately after the vote, meaning that senators would need to take up the legislation or face blame for a shutdown, since there was no way for the House to consider additional legislation before Monday.

Hard-right Republicans refused to support the stopgap bill, known as a continuing resolution, because it essentially maintained funding at levels set when Congress was under Democratic control last year.

Democrats celebrated the outcome and said they would be able to secure money for Ukraine in the next round of spending debates.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/30/us/government-shutdown-house-republicans.html">The New York Times</a>.