House Republicans’ first effort to keep the government open ahead of a shutdown deadline on September 30 failed on the House floor today, with a handful of Republicans joining almost every Democrat in voting down the bill.
A big reason why: the stopgap funding bill was paired with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a bill near-universally opposed by Democrats that would require would-be voters to show proof of American citizenship in order to register to vote. The stopgap bill also ran through March 2025, when a new president and Congress will be in office, rather than through December 2024 like Democrats would prefer.
The failure of the continuing resolution (CR) was widely expected – in fact, it had already been pulled from consideration once before due to lack of support – prompting many Democrats to lambaste House Speaker Mike Johnson for putting it up for a doomed vote anyways.
“I think that this is some sort of order from former President Donald Trump to the Speaker, telling him what to do,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) said. “They’re playing politics and are willing to put the government, and the things we do for veterans and for seniors and for families, at risk while they play their political games.”
(Trump, for what it’s worth, has said that the government should be shut down if Congress can’t pass the SAVE Act.)
Gottheimer, like all of his fellow New Jersey Democrats, opposed the bill; Republican Reps. Chris Smith (R-Manchester), Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis), and Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) all voted for it. Smith said that he supported the bill both because he’s a proponent of the SAVE Act and because he’d rather not see the government shut down.
“You’ve got to keep the government going,” Smith said. “I’m not for a shutdown. I think it’s counterproductive… [Shutdowns] are a blunt instrument, and it’s better to continually try to work it out.”
Now that Johnson’s proposal has failed, it’s up to both houses of Congress to figure out an alternate way to fund the government before the end of the month. The most obvious path forward is to simply pass a “clean” CR with no other policy riders, which is what Democrats in both the House and Senate have wanted from the beginning.
“I think within a few days, you know what’s going to happen?” Gottheimer said. “We’re going to vote on a clean CR. That’s my prediction.”