'Fight with everything that we have': Freedom Caucus GOP lawmakers won't back down in shutdown fight

WASHINGTON — The House has less than 10 working days to fund the government and avoid a catastrophic shutdown.

While House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has often managed to consolidate differences among fractured House Republicans the looming government shutdown fight is turning out to be his biggest challenge yet with the House’s most conservative lawmakers proving to be unyielding in their demands.

Members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus have been insisting on a swath of red-meat orders from House GOP leadership, including additional funding for security on the southern border and deeper cuts to spending than what McCarthy and President Joe Biden originally brokered in a debt ceiling deal earlier in the summer.

Compared to other lawmakers, who have warned against a government shutdown, those conservatives have openly flirted with leveraging a shutdown if it means they can extract their wishes from McCarthy.

With limited time remaining, it is highly likely McCarthy will have to pass a short-term extension on government funding – known as a continuing resolution – to buy lawmakers more time to hash out a spending package.

But several conservative lawmakers – more than the four-vote margin McCarthy is working with – say they have no interest in supporting a continuing resolution if it doesn't include their demands.

Related: Will Biden impeachment inquiry impact shutdown fight? Here's what House GOP says

House Freedom Caucus member: ‘We are going to fight with everything that we have’

During Congress’ weeks-long August recess, the House Freedom Caucus released an official position detailing its demands in exchange for its members' support for a spending package.

Among those demands are a slew of asks that have zero chance of passing the Democratic controlled Senate: increased security at the southern border, an end to what conservatives allege is “weaponization” of the Department of Justice and striking “woke” policies from the Pentagon. Those policies largely center on the Department of Defense's abortion policies.

“We’re not interested in a continuing resolution that continues the policies and spendings of the Biden, Schumer, Pelosi era,” Rep. Scott Perry, R-Penn., chair of the House Freedom Caucus, said in a press conference Tuesday. “We’re here to put our foot down and say this place right here, it stops now.”

Even with just 10 working days to fund the government, Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., another member of the Freedom Caucus, dismissed the time crunch to reporters.

“Now you run into a calendar problem, but the calendar problem is small compared to the principle battle that we’re in. We are not going to casually fund the decline of our country, we being the Freedom Caucus,” Higgins said Tuesday. “We are going to fight with everything that we have.”

Conservatives from outside the House Freedom Caucus are also drawing hard lines on the spending fight. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., has threatened to file a motion of vacate – a move to eject McCarthy from the speakership – if he puts a continuing resolution with no changes on current funding levels on the House floor.

Moderate GOP lawmakers balk at ultra-conservative threats on shutdown fight

While the Freedom Caucus and other House conservatives have shown little desire to budge on their positions, moderate GOP lawmakers have balked at the threat of a shutdown.

“I oppose a shutdown,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told reporters Wednesday. “I think it’s not a good reflection on our country. The federal government hits these shutdown crises all the time. We’re the strongest country in the world. Let’s govern and do it right.”

Bacon shrugged off a possible challenge to McCarthy’s speakership and said there’s “180 to 200 of us, or maybe more that will support him and will support him for 15 more votes or 50 more votes.”

“I don’t think we should cater to the threats,” Bacon added.

Despite the wide disagreements between the GOP conference’s moderate lawmakers and ultra-conservatives, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., sought to blame Democrats for a potential shutdown, arguing they are not adhering to the debt ceiling deal negotiated by McCarthy and Biden.

“Look, if they don’t want to adhere to the spending numbers. We’re gonna have a hell of a nasty fall,” McHenry told reporters Wednesday.

Senate continues to urge bipartisanship in House ahead of looming shutdown

On the other side of Capitol Hill, the Senate has mostly been working through the appropriations process on a bipartisan basis, and lawmakers from the chamber have urged the House to follow in its footsteps.

“There is only one way, one way that this will happen: through bipartisanship,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said last week on the Senate floor. “Neither party can go at it alone if we want to avoid a shutdown.”

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said his “heart’s with them,” but the Freedom Caucus so far appears disorganized in how it’s handling appropriations.

“I don’t know that the Freedom Caucus has one approach here. Look, my heart’s with them. They want to reduce the rate of debt and spending and I appreciate that,” Kennedy, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told USA TODAY. “But they haven’t come up with one plan yet.”

While he is not part of the caucus, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, told USA TODAY he hopes “we get a regular order appropriation process completed on a timely basis” and said “shutting down the government in the past has not accomplished anything.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Government shutdown fight heightens as Freedom Caucus vows to fight