Democrats dismiss McCarthy calls for Biden to deal on government shutdown

Democrats are largely dismissing calls by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for President Biden to cut a deal to avoid a shutdown as internal divides in the House GOP dominate attention.

McCarthy has made repeated calls this week for the president to come to the bargaining table, as the party pursues changes to border policy and further spending cuts as part of a deal to prevent a shutdown this weekend.

But Democrats say the Speaker is in a weaker starting position than earlier this year — when he used the threat of a national default as leverage to secure a deal with Biden on budget caps — and argue McCarthy is the one who backed away from that deal.

“McCarthy has no capacity to deliver. Why would the president talk to somebody who can’t even get his own caucus together?” Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) told The Hill. “That’s a dodge. Kevin’s got to get his caucus together.”

“The deal to avoid the shutdown was negotiated when we negotiated on the debt ceiling,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) told The Hill. “So, Kevin essentially made an agreement, voted on that agreement, and now he’s saying I want another agreement — which is ridiculous.”

McCarthy has been seeking to put pressure on Biden this week as both chambers go in opposite directions in strategies to prevent a lapse in government funding. 

“All the president has to do, call us up, let’s sit down and get this done before the end of the week,” McCarthy told reporters late Tuesday. “He could change this by a simple stroke of his own words of how this border is happening.”

Hours before his remarks, the Senate advanced legislation that would kick the shutdown deadline into mid-November, while temporarily keeping funding at current levels to buy more time for spending talks and green-lighting billions in aid for Ukraine and disaster relief.

Many House Republicans consider the legislation as dead on arrival in the lower chamber, where the conference has pushed for a stopgap measure that also includes most of its signature border bill, known as H.R. 2, as well as steep cuts to government funding.

It’s unclear when the text may be released. McCarthy said he’s eyeing bringing up the party’s go-it-alone stopgap measure, also known as a continuing resolution (CR), for consideration Friday. But there are a handful of House Republicans that have vowed not to support a CR.

“I don’t know if a CR will pass but I will tell you, and I’ve been very consistent about that, that I won’t vote for a CR,” Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) told The Hill on Tuesday.

“It doesn’t matter what you attach to it, a CR is, by very definition, a continuation of Nancy Pelosi’s spending and it’s Joe Biden’s policies,” he added. 

The bill also isn’t expected to fetch any Democratic support, as the party has criticized emerging details of Republicans’ evolving stopgap plan — making GOP leadership’s job tougher to lock down sufficient support with a small majority.   

House Republicans are hoping to replicate their debt limit strategy seen earlier this year, when GOP leadership negotiated with the Biden administration on a deal to stave off the threat of a national default for two years, along with limits on federal funding, changes to public assistance programs, among other measures.

Leading up to talks, the House Republicans were able to unite behind a much more conservative plan that served as a starting point for the party in negotiations. Leadership credits the strategy to putting pressure on Biden, who had refused to negotiate over the debt limit, to eventually bargain.

The deal was met with fierce opposition from hardline conservatives who said it didn’t go far enough to tackle the deficit and pushback from progressives who felt the Biden administration bent too much in talks. 

And Democrats say House Republicans are the ones reneging on that agreement by crafting their spending bills at levels under the cap.

“He’s already come to the table repeatedly. What we have found is that when it comes to this Republican majority, that chaos is not the symptom. It is the strategy,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said.

But GOP negotiators who were involved in the agreement see it as the fruits of a winning strategy. 

“Anytime you have a situation where you have leverage like this, you get wins, and two of the things we’re focused on is securing the southern border and reducing excessive spending in this administration,” Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), a close McCarthy ally and member of GOP leadership, told reporters on Wednesday. 

“We’re going to keep trying to focus on that,” Graves said. But he added he thinks “there are folks that are playing this wrong, and that folks are going down, they’re trying to force us down a path toward a shut down [that] I think actually takes away leverage rather than gives us more.”

Republicans say McCarthy assured members at a party meeting earlier on Wednesday that he would not bring up the Senate’s stopgap bill for a vote on the floor, as leadership works to unify the conference around spending talks. 

But there are moderate House Republicans that have signaled openness to the Senate plan, which has drawn support on both sides of the aisle, as the shutdown threat looms. 

Some senators expect the bill, which has also notched backing from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), to pass later this week. But some Republicans have been piling criticism on the legislation for its inclusion of Ukraine aid and not doing more to address the border. 

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told reporters Wednesday he has “no intention” voting on the Senate’s CR in the upper chamber, adding he plans to offer amendments that “address the problem at the border.”

Tillis, who’s worked across the aisle on immigration legislation in the past, identified changes aimed at “reducing the number of illegal crossings” when pressed by reporters about potential areas for bipartisan compromise, as Republicans point to a jump in illegal border crossings. 

But other Democrats have already pushed back on the prospect of border security measures being tacked onto a CR.

“My impression is the package that the [Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)] and minority leader have released has the votes,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), top Democrat on the appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the Department of Homeland Security. 

“If this could pass the House, why go through weeks more of negotiation when there’s a bill that the House could pass? And the only reason it wouldn’t pass is because McCarthy wouldn’t call a vote on it,” he said.

–Updated at 8:10 a.m.