In a tense meeting on Friday night, one member said “bulls—” to another. House Republicans left a closed-door conference meeting on Friday night feeling angry and without a clear plan for how to keep the government from shutting down.
The government’s money runs out at the end of the day today, and it’s almost certain that House and Senate lawmakers won’t come to an agreement by midnight to keep non-essential government programs from stopping and thousands of federal workers from being sent home.
“The trouble is that the people who are holding out aren’t giving us any other choices. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, told reporters as he left the meeting, “The holdouts say, ‘Well, why don’t we have a shutdown and work on the appropriations process?’ as if all of a sudden, the messy democracy that makes the appropriations process hard in the first place will be fixed.” “It’s a democracy, and it’s hard. And that’s not taken into account.”
A person in the room told Fox News Digital that the meeting was “very” tense as Republicans argued about who was to blame for the present situation.
A source said that at one point, Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., blamed moderate Republicans and conservatives from rural districts for the failure of one of the four spending bills that the House voted on Thursday night.
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One of these Republicans, Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa), “stood up and said that’s bulls— and you know it,” the source said, adding that Feenstra said this “multiple times.”
Another person who was there and heard the conversation stated that Feenstra called out Good, but they didn’t say what he said.
Good, on the other hand, told reporters that he didn’t think the meeting went well.
What we heard from Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was a full surrender,” Good said. “I think the Speaker has pretty much given in to what the Senate wants.”
Twenty-one hard-core Republicans voted with Democrats earlier on Friday to kill the continuing resolution (CR), which was a stopgap spending patch from the House GOP. The goal of that bill was to cut spending to the level it would be at in fiscal year 2022 and also to put into place parts of the House GOP border security bill.
But a source in the room told Fox News Digital that McCarthy warned members that if they didn’t come together, the GOP-controlled House might have to consider a CR led by Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., that would mostly extend this year’s funding and give extra money for aid to Ukraine and disaster relief in the U.S.
Several members of the House, however, brought up the idea of a CR with the same House GOP goals, but for only 14 days instead of a month.
“It would be a change from what we did today,” Republican Study Committee Chair Kevin Hern, R-Okla., told reporters on Friday night. “We’d look at the calendar, the calendar that’s been put forward now, and also see if we can do it in 14 days…to make sure that everyone has faith that we can work through these bills.”
Rep. Andy Barr, R-Kentucky, a member of the GOP whip team, said on Friday night that the conference was looking for support for the 14-day plan.
Barr said, “That’s going on right now.” “And if they have the votes on that, and if enough of them change their minds, which, by the way, some of them are doing right now. And they will vote for the same thing they voted against today, but at a lower level. The question is, “Are enough of them starting to change their minds?”
But it’s not clear yet if everyone agrees on a clear way to move forward.
Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tennessee, a new member of the House, said he brought up the idea of a seven-day CR.
“I think we can suggest securing the border in seven days with some cuts. “Then we keep reauthorizing that every seven days until we’re done,” Ogles said. He also said that he brought up the idea in conference.
“I brought it up in the room, and I talked to the leadership about it this morning. I brought it up early, so it’s up for discussion.”
House Republicans are meeting this morning, and they are expected to talk about how to move forward.
Lawmakers were told to prepare for votes on Saturday, but no one could say what they would vote for as they left the meeting.
