House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is trying to avoid shutting down the federal government, but Punchbowl News' Jake Sherman reports that he's "getting put in an awful position" heading into this fall's budget negotiations.
As a longer Punchbowl News report makes clear, there is a bipartisan coalition in the Senate that is preparing to jam McCarthy by passing a supplemental spending package that will fund additional border security, military aid to Ukraine, and domestic disaster relief.
Passing such a package with strong bipartisan support would put enormous pressure on McCarthy to get it through the House of Representatives, where he faces the constant threat of rebellion from members of the House Freedom Caucus who are still furious over his deal to raise the debt ceiling earlier this year.
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"McCarthy is dealing with a fractious GOP conference that includes lawmakers clamoring for a shutdown and insisting that they won’t back any funding bill that doesn’t authorize a Biden impeachment inquiry," writes Punchbowl News. "On top of that, the right wing of the House GOP says they are perfectly comfortable with a government shutdown, dismissing its political and practical impact as minimal."
Of course, history shows that parties responsible for shutting down the federal government eventually back off with little to show, as happened in the 1990s when then-Speaker Newt Gingrich shut down the government and in 2013 when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) led a shutdown aimed at getting then-President Barack Obama to repeal his own signature health care law.
