Republicans appeal to far-right conservatives to avert US government shutdown

WASHINGTON – With just a week before Washington runs out of money to keep the federal government fully operating, warring factions within the Republican Party in the United States Congress on Sunday showed no signs of coming together to pass a stopgap funding Bill.

Congress so far has failed to finish any of the 12 regular spending Bills to fund federal agency programmes in the fiscal year starting on Oct 1.

House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy will push an ambitious plan this week to win approval for four large Bills, including military and homeland security funding, which he hopes would demonstrate enough progress to far-right Republicans to win their support for a stopgap spending Bill, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, as well.

Republican Representative Michael McCaul, a 19-year veteran of Congress who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, urged the group of party “holdouts” to stop blocking Republican-backed spending Bills while at the same time “saying don’t bring bipartisan Bills to the floor”.

“Republicans need to vote for Republican Bills” to avert a shutdown, Mr McCaul said on ABC’s This Week broadcast.

But some of those “holdouts”, who want deep spending cuts that go beyond a deal passed earlier in the year, showed no sign of relenting.

“Continuing resolutions don’t solve the problem. They just kick the can down the road,” Republican Representative Tony Gonzalez told CBS News’ Face the Nation.

In June,

President Joe Biden signed into law an increase in US borrowing

authority that he brokered with Mr McCarthy, which also came with around US$1.5 trillion (S$2.05 trillion) in spending cuts over 10 years.

Ultra-right House Republicans want to go further with around US$120 billion in additional cuts just for the new fiscal year, which could hit programmes ranging from education and environmental protection to Internal Revenue Service enforcement and medical research.

Similarly, Republican Representative Tim Burchett told CNN’s State of the Union that he has never voted for a temporary funding Bill and will not this time around.

He warned that if Mr McCarthy allows legislation to pass the House with Democratic support, “I would look strongly at” a move to strip Mr McCarthy of his speakership.

“This dysfunctional Washington cannot continue,” Mr Burchett said, referring to the way Congress handles the federal budget, which is on a path to a US$1.5 trillion deficit for the fiscal year that ends on Saturday.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warned in an ABC interview that a government shutdown will require his agency to immediately suspend air traffic controller training courses at a time when air travel is “getting back to normal” following a high volume of flight delays and disruptions in 2022.

Aides to Mr McCarthy were not immediately available for comment on whether negotiations over a CR were continuing on Sunday.

But he has been pushing for a 30-day Bill to keep federal offices open, coupled with a strict border security plan that would basically suspend most immigration into the US at a time of record numbers of people seeking asylum on the border with Mexico.

Even some of the Senate’s most conservative Republicans on Sunday appealed to House counterparts to stop blocking a stopgap Bill. “We would like for the House to begin that process of sending us a CR to keep the government open and functioning,” Senator Marsha Blackburn told Fox Business News.

Appealing to those conservatives’ eagerness for conducting investigations into Mr Biden and some other top administration officials, Ms Blackburn added: “If you shut down the government, you can’t continue that.” REUTERS