How Congress Averted a Government Shutdown at the Last Minute

At long last, on Saturday morning—with only hours to go before a government funding deadline—House Speaker Kevin McCarthy finally bit the bullet and turned to Democrats to help him pass a short-term spending bill, which passed the Senate later in the day.

The government will not shut down.

The question for the coming days is whether McCarthy will stay on as speaker.

On Friday afternoon, once McCarthy’s partisan proposal to avert it still couldn’t muster enough conservative votes to pass, a shutdown seemed inevitable. House leadership was beginning to signal that it was out of options, except to swallow whole a bipartisan Senate proposal that would be coming its way in a matter of days.

But after a morning meeting with his conference, McCarthy, recognizing that the shutdown would earn Republicans nothing on policy but all of the blame, went ahead with the final option: a “clean” stopgap bill funding the government at current spending levels until mid-November, along with billions in disaster relief. (The bill would also extend the statutory authority of the Federal Aviation Administration, which was set to expire at midnight as well. This is good news for people who fly on planes.)

The one pill House and Senate Democrats—as well as about half of House Republicans, most Senate Republicans, and the White House—would have to swallow was no additional aid to Ukraine, for which the White House had requested tens of billions.

Democrats at first didn’t seem to know what to do with this offer. Once it came out, they insisted on time to pore through the 71-page bill—one that McCarthy was hoping to vote on within a matter of minutes. They stalled by moving to adjourn. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries bought time by using a privilege reserved for party leaders to speak on the floor without a time limit.

Those are all typical stalling tactics. An atypical stalling tactic is pulling a fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building and forcing an evacuation. This is something middle-schoolers do to avoid taking tests, though, which is perhaps why New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a former middle school principal, was familiar with the tactic and chose to do it.

After the representative was caught red-handed on security footage pulling the alarm, Bowman’s office said he “did not realize he would trigger a building alarm as he was rushing to make an urgent vote. The Congressman regrets any confusion.” Bowman later told reporters that he thought “the alarm would open the door.” This all sounds more than a bit shaky, and one might think he’d let Capitol Police know of his accident before they evacuated the building. He’s in trouble.

After this … episode, Democrats decided to fall in line behind the bill and declare victory.

It was the only decision. They got most of what they wanted in a continuation of current spending levels, which are loathed by Republicans, and in terms of much-needed disaster relief funds. The lack of Ukraine aid is a serious issue, as those accounts will begin to dry up. But Democrats accepted that it wouldn’t be politically feasible to shut down the United States government over it. Democrats would have assumed blame for a shutdown, been forced to cave and reopen the government without securing aid for Ukraine, and risked continued public support for Ukraine assistance in the process. Although it’s unclear when additional aid for Ukraine will come, keeping Kyiv out of Russian hands is still a top priority for every leader in Washington except McCarthy. (Probably for him too, though he can’t outright say it.) They’ll figure something out.

What Democrats also got, though, was a cave from McCarthy on his promises, both that he wouldn’t fund the government at Democratic-preferred levels and that border policy would be addressed in any spending bill. The vote tally in the House was 335 to 91, with all but one Democrat voting in favor. (Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley, the lone Democratic nay, cited the lack of Ukraine aid.) Meanwhile, 126 Republicans voted for it, and 90 Republicans voted against it.

Hours later, following a brief delay as Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet sought assurances on Ukraine assistance going forward, the Senate passed the stopgap by a vote of 88 to 9.

McCarthy’s decision to rely on Democratic votes to reopen the government, which was the only way that keeping the government open was ever going to happen, will now likely force the long-awaited question on the retention of his speakership. He acknowledged that on Saturday, telling reporters, “If someone wants to remove [me] because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try.

“If I have to risk my job for standing up for the American public,” he added, “I will do that.”

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, McCarthy’s chief antagonist throughout this process, who, for reasons that run deeper than Gaetz’s purported commitment to rigid budgeting processes, wants to see the speaker gone, will probably try. (He may have even tried to introduce his resolution to vacate the speakership before being conveniently unseen as the House was gaveled into adjournment.) He’ll have Republican buddies who may want to try too. Ultimately, it will come down to how House Democrats land on the question if it’s put to a vote.

You may wonder why, if this bipartisan outcome was inevitable, McCarthy spent so much time trying and failing to pass go-nowhere bills with Republican votes only. Well, if today’s solution had been his first offering, the discontent with his strategy would have been much larger. But by demonstrating that every possible permutation of short-term spending bill wouldn’t pass muster with a small band of Republicans led by Gaetz, he showed how his opponents weren’t working in entirely good faith. The antipathy most House Republicans feel toward Gaetz at the moment is off the charts. And if McCarthy’s speakership is put up to a vote, they won’t want to let Gaetz win.