Congress has less than 40 days to pass 12 departmental appropriation bills needed to avert a government shutdown.
Passage of the annual federal budget could be further delayed after House Republicans voted on Oct. 3 to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from his position.
Mr. McCarthy’s ouster increases the chances that Republicans could become further at odds with each other—and Democrats—as Congress has less than 40 days to pass 12 departmental appropriation bills needed to avert a government shutdown.
“Right now it’s all in the hands of the Republican Party; they are in a civil war and are not including the Democrats in making any choices [to fund the government],” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) told The Epoch Times.
“I said to Speaker McCarthy [before he was ousted] we’re ready to work with you, and I know [your party] is trying to kick you out, some of us could help you … but that’s a decision you’ve got to make.”
Ultimately Mr. McCarthy decided not to reach out to Democrats to pass a permanent fix to fund the federal government for a full year and opted for a stop-gap measure, a continuing resolution, that would fund the government until Nov. 17.
The temporary measure angered Democrats by excluding any federal aid to Ukraine, something President Joe Biden pushed for, and also did not sit well with some Republicans like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) who would later lead an effort to oust Mr. McCarthy. Mr. Gaetz introduced the motion to vacate the speaker’s role which passed in a 216–210 vote, with eight Republicans joining every Democrat in the House of Representatives to kick out the speaker.
“Chaos is Speaker McCarthy. Chaos is somebody who we cannot trust with their word,” Mr. Gaetz said on the House floor. “The one thing that the White House, House Democrats, and many of us on the conservative side of the Republican caucus would argue is that the thing we have in common is Kevin McCarthy said something to all of us at one point or another that he didn’t really mean and never intended to live up to.”
By Joe Gomez
