We Barely Averted a Shutdown- Now What?
Josh Huder | October 3, 2023
Congress narrowly averted a government shutdown Saturday when Speaker McCarthy shocked Capitol Hill and expedited a clean continuing resolution on the House Floor, funding the government at current levels for 45 days, against the wishes of hardliners in his conference. The bill passed easily on bipartisan lines, was quickly taken up in the Senate, and passed before the end of the day. It was a shocking turn even for a Congress that has registered a number of highly unusual events.
However, McCarthy will pay a price. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has made good on his promise to offer a motion to vacate the chair, which would remove McCarthy from the speakership if successful.
Motion to Vacate
The motion to vacate is not new to the House but it has received increasing attention in recent years. The rule allows any member of the House to make a motion to remove the Speaker, which would be done by majority vote. In fact, the House has only once ever voted on a motion to vacate. That occurred in 1910 when a group of progressive Republicans revolted against Speaker Cannon. The rebels managed to strip the Speaker of important powers, but when the motion to vacate was brought to the floor, they declined to remove Speaker Cannon from the chair. As a result, Speaker Cannon continued in his position but with diminished strength and authority to dictate House operation.
McCarthy’s case is very different for a number of reasons. First, a group of radicals, rather than moderates, are leading the charge. Rep. Gaetz and a handful of others have made McCarthy’s job very difficult in recent weeks. They sunk several special rules meant to bring appropriations to the floor, voted against annual spending bills, including the typically bipartisan defense spending bill, and opposed steep cuts McCarthy included in his first attempt to pass a continuing resolution. Opposition to McCarthy is coming from the Republican conference’s right flank rather than its more moderate center.
This matters because any successful motion to vacate would need to gather a majority of the House. This will prove to be a challenge for the Republican rebels. First, by stalling government spending, rebels frustrated their Republican colleagues. McCarthy brought numerous conservative spending bills to the floor leading up to the weekend in an attempt to appease hardliners’ demands, only to watch many of those bills fail due to continued opposition from the very members they were designed to attract. Rank-and-file Republicans’ exasperation became apparent on Saturday; Gaetz won few allies this past week. It’s hard to tell exactly how many members would vote against McCarthy, but anything over two-dozen votes would be surprising.
In other words, any motion to vacate will likely need Democratic support to pass. Given rebels’ ideological and partisan differences with Democrats, it may prove to be a challenge. Democrats may not enjoy McCarthy as Speaker but they would undoubtedly be far less happy with a more radical Speaker that rebels prefer. They could effectively keep McCarthy in the chair in a couple of ways in addition to voting against the motion. First, they could vote to table the motion, a common parliamentary process that effectively terminates a motion offered on the floor. Second, Democrats could abstain or vote present, which would effectively allow the Republican conference to determine whether McCarthy stays.
All that said, there are plenty of reasons Democrats might opt not to help McCarthy out of this jam. At this point, they do not view him as a trustworthy governing partner, and most Democrats are loathe to become enmeshed in an ongoing Republican civil war. If McCarthy were to leave, he would mostly likely take the route chosen by nearly every other speaker: he will step aside. Whether McCarthy stays or goes remains to be seen. What is clear though is that Republicans do not have a functional majority in the House. Their very narrow seat advantage is not enough to overcome their internal divisions.
Government Funding
All of this bodes poorly for the next spending standoff. Congress has until just before Thanksgiving to pass annual spending bills or, more likely, another temporary funding patch. Despite September’s drama, little has changed. Fundamentally, House Republicans cannot pass all annual appropriations bills or a continuing resolution without Democratic help in the House, and their preferences are also at odds with Senate approval. And further, any Speaker that seeks bipartisan help to fund the government will likely face another far-right motion to vacate the chair. For their part, Democrats are unlikely to support a spending bill that falls short of the debt limit deal Biden and McCarthy struck in May. In other words, the government could face another shutdown risk in November. In the meantime, Ukraine aid hangs in limbo. A majority of both chambers approve of it, but the growing House Republican opposition makes its fate, both timing and generosity, unclear.
That said, a bipartisan majority will eventually fund the government. Senate Republicans appear to have little appetite for a shutdown, voting to exclude Ukraine aid from the continuing resolution to avoid a standoff with the House before the funding deadline. House Democrats already supported Republican efforts to keep the government open. In other words, the result is largely known even if the path to get there is not. We could see another episode like this past week, when leaders eventually concede the inevitable and fund the government before the deadline. Or, it’s possible a shutdown is needed before a critical mass of legislators force leaders’ hands.
The best hope would be for each chamber to continue working their spending bills in the hopes that these incremental steps get the chambers close enough to a deal to avoid additional drama. But how that deal shakes out depends on the kind of chamber McCarthy or some other leader wants to run in the House. Whether that is a responsible path or a more risky and costly one remains to be seen.
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