Lawmakers are planning to work through the weekend on a solution to a government shutdown that now seems almost sure to happen when the fiscal year ends Saturday night.
A bipartisan continuing resolution in the Senate is on hold while a group of Republicans and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) work on an amendment to provide border security funding in an attempt to make the bill more palatable to House Republicans. It’s unclear when the Senate will be in a position to vote on the stopgap, where any Senator can slow down the process.
But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is insistent on trying to pass a more conservative stopgap spending bill with strong border security provisions and deep non-defense spending cuts. As we publish On Base, McCarthy does not seem to have the votes to pass that bill, which could be defeated on the floor today if McCarthy proceeds with a vote.
At the moment, there does not seem to be a solution to avoid a shutdown or a timeline for when it might end.
Politico photo by Francis Chung
