Today on a special edition of The Big Take Shutdown averted.
On this vote, they as are three hundred and thirty five, then a's are ninety one, two thirds being in the affirmative, the rules are suspended. The bill has passed, and with that objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table.
Congress defies expectations the US House there passing a stopgap funding bill late Saturday to keep the government running. The Senate followed with just hours to spare, and as many predicted, Kevin McCarthy is already facing a challenge to his speakershift.
I do intend to file a motion of vacate against Speaker McCarthy this week. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy.
Congressman Matt Gates, the Republican from Florida, making clear on CNN among other networks that he will make good on his promise to try to oust the Speaker for passing a continuing resolution with the help of Democrats. Speaker McCarthy unfazed when asked about Gates on CBS's Faced Nation.
He's more interested in securing TV interviews than doing something. He wanted to push us into a shutdown, even threatening his own district with all the military people there who would not be paid, only because he wants to take this motion, so be it. Bring it on, Let's get over with it, and let's start governing.
Bring it on. The legislation includes sixteen billion dollars in disaster relief funding and no aid for Ukraine. It funds the government until November seventeenth. What happens after that remains a big question, much like Kevin McCarthy's future as speaker. I'm Joe Matthew, host of sound On in Balance of Power on Bloomberg Radio and Television, stepping in for West Ksova today, and I'm joined by two reporters who have lived this process every day the past weeks. Dare I
say months? Bloomberg Politics reporter Laura Davison and Jack Fitzpatrick, Congress reporter at Bloomberg Government. Thanks for both of you being here. We're lucky to have you, and Jack, I'll start with you. Kevin McCarthy surprised a lot of people here. Senator John Cornyn said he pulled a rabbit out of the hat. What made him finally call the bluff of his right flank.
I mean, this was always an option to depend on Democratic votes. It was just assumed by many lawmakers that he wouldn't do that at this point. Even right before the deadline, there were members like Steve Womack, incidentally, whose voice that was calling the final vote and banging the final gavel, saying he expected a shut down, and then the pressure would start, maybe a discharge petition would force
McCarthy's hand. Evidently he got fed up with the pressure from a fairly small group of the hard right members. And it's not shocking that he had to depend on Democratic votes, but the quickness and the immediacy and the sudden nature of him turning away from the right flank and doing a with Democrats was shocking, to be honest.
Laura, we thought we'd be gathering together today to talk about his shutdown. Lover hate this speaker, and we have both in Washington. We do have to acknowledge this man has repeatedly defied expectations.
Yeah, the deal that came together over the course of really just a couple hours yesterday is somewhat reminiscent of the vote or series of votes in which McCarthy was elected speaker back in January. It was fifteen votes multiple days, and really, you know, even when the vote started that eventually elected McCarthy, it was not clear at all that he was going to become speaker on that ballot. So this is kind of how Washington works. Congress is notorious
for waiting till the very last moment. This is a prime example of, you know, where they basically had everyone convinced everyone in the federal government was preparing for a shutdown.
I know even some federal workers who were thinking that they we might have a week or two off work, and they were making other plans that you know, was averted really just over the course of McCarthy basically changing his mind and say, Nope, We're going to put forward a stopgap measure, and I'm going to basically dare and challenge Matt Gates and the right flank to try to get rid of me.
So I'm left with two big questions here that I want to explore with you both. I suspect you both have ideas. One did we simply prolong a shutdown to November seventeenth, And two will Kevin McCarthy still be speaker by then? What do you think? Jack?
Well, First, you know, it's going to be tough to strike a funding deal. But the idea that on November seventeenth, we're going to be right back in the same place we were a few days ago, I think is wrong because the political calculus has to have changed now that Speaker McCarthy ripped off the band aid and said, you know what, I don't need to endlessly deal with the
threats from Matt Gates and other hard right members. I don't know how to predict how many Democratic votes he's going to seek in the funding bills, how quick they can move that along. But something in the political calculus clearly changed and it's impossible to reset that. Will he survive this round? I mean, Matt Gates tweeted earlier today that he thinks that McCarthy will get Democratic support and he will stay on as Speaker, even as Gates is
trying to recruit more people to go after him. How many Democratic votes does he get? This is very, very unpredictable also, But it's not quite as simple as saying that McCarthy lost lost the support of the right and so he's gone. He's got options to rely on. But there are a lot of questions that McCarthy has to figure out answers to over the next month or so.
What's your thought, Laura, do we still face another shutdown before the end of this year and will Kevin McCarthy be holding the gavel when it happens.
I tend to agree with Jack that a lot in the political calculus will change between now and November seven team, and it's unlikely that we're going to be, you know, at six o'clock in the evening in the Capitol on November sixteenth, you know, scrambling to see if there's a cr deal that comes together, or you know, heading kareeming into a shutdown, and there will be a lot that will change and a lot that will can be done, deals can be cut.
To avoid the situation we're in right now.
I'll also note that's the week before Thanksgiving, and these big holidays where people want to get out of Washington do a lot to get people to the table to make a deal. Whether McCarthy is that person who is negotiating with with Senate Democrats, as Jack said, remains to be seen. There are a couple things here that are
that are important to realize. One, if you're a Democrat, the question you're asking yourself, is you know it's going to be a Republican it's going to be speaker, you know, is McCarthy.
Better than somebody else?
And saying the question that will be posed to the Conservatives who are trying to get rid of him, are, if not McCarthy, who can it be. We saw just how hard it was earlier this year, how it is to get the Republican caucust to poalesce around one person. Tom Emmer is a name that has been floated. He's a member of leadership, well respected, but he's not a hardline Freedom Caucus person. This may not be the people
who are trying to get rid of McCarthy. If they put Emma in his place, they're going to end up with roughly sort of the same person, the same politics, and a lot of the same world we've here. So this is a real tricky gambit, both for Democrats and for people like Matt Gates who want to see McCarthy gone. You know, are they just extracting a pound of flash and then have no plan on the other side, or is there someone that can rise to the top and that really remains to be seen.
Great questions here Jacket's interesting. The House bill passed three point thirty five to ninety one, ninety republican knows. I suspect there are not ninety Republicans, though, who share Matt Gates's feeling that the speaker should be fired. And when he was asked about this on ABC This Week on Sunday Morning, Matt Gates suggested that this might be some sort of a proxy for Democratic support for Kevin McCarthy, as if he was exposing a deal that he had
made with the Democrats. Listen to how he put it.
I actually think Democrats are going to bail out Kevin McCarthy. So this is an exercise to show the American people who really governs you and how that governing occurs. So I'm on a mission to change it. Where we're evaluating these bills independently. Kevin McCarthy is off making a secret deal on Ukraine as he's baiting Republicans to vote for a continuing resolution that doesn't include Ukraine.
Okay, So, Jack, that doesn't sound like a Matt Gates who actually thinks Kevin McCarthy's going to get fired, does it?
No?
I think that's an attempt by Gates to gin up as much opposition to McCarthy as possible among the right flank. He might be reaching a bit on the Ukraine thing. He is referring to a statement that came out from Democratic leaders saying they expect a standalone vote on a measure to offer that Ukraine aid that was kept out of the stop gap. It's not proof that there is
a backroom deal on Ukraine. If anything, it might be the opposite, because pulling out Ukraine fund funding was the one kind of victory that the Conservatives got out of Republican leadership on this. Really, Gates is ginning up as much opposition to McCarthy as possible right now, and saying that he is doing backroom deals with Democrats helps him do that. It's very possible that Democrats help McCarthy and
they don't even have to vote for him. They can vote at present and not cast a vote for someone. But it's not quite as simple as I think the quote unquote uniparty kind of conspiracy theories that might start floating out there.
Coming up on a special edition of The Big Take, the debate over Ukraine funding and why a member of the House pulled a fire alarm and the throes of votes this weekend. We'll have more ahead with Jack Fitzpatrick and Laura Davison straight ahead on the big President Biden signed the stopgap funding measure to keep the government open over the weekend, with just minutes to spare before the midnight deadline.
I strongly urge my Republican friends in Congress not to wait. Don't waste time as you did all summer. Pass a year long budget agreement. Honor the deal we made a few months ago.
Of course, that would be the debt sealing deal, which has been relitigated ever since. I'm Joe Matthew in Washington in for Wescusilva today, and I'm joined by Jack Fitzpatrick, Congress reporter at Bloomberg Government, along with Laura Davison, Bloomberg Politics reporter. What's your thought here lower on the way forward? Because Ukraine is still going to be a major sticking point.
The White House, of course has put forth a supplemental request for billions of dollars in additional aid for Ukraine, and it's one of the big sticking points that brought us to the verge of a shutdown. This buys time until November seventeenth, as we've discussed, but the debate around Ukraine won't likely change much between now and then.
Will It.
Won't.
And this is really a debate that the Republican Party is having with itself. You just had to look at the both what happened in Congress this week as well as the Republican debate in California, where you have Republicans really split on a you know, kind of an older guard, the more hawkish faction of the party that's saying, look, we need to support Ukraine because it's really protecting us against Russia and you know, and sort of not gone from their China, Whereas you have some of the more
members of the Freedom Caucus, you know, political newcomers like the vek Aramaswami coming in saying, look, we don't need to be focused on that, We need to be focused on our southern borders.
We need to spend money elsewhere.
So that's the debate that's going to play out over the next several weeks. You have Democrats and also some old guard Republicans, you know, including Mitch McConnell who's saying, look,
Ukraine spending is important. This is going to be a really really tricky thing that they're going to have to figure out both the amount of money, how it's allocated, and it's really uncertain kind of when how this will happen, particularly if the House is really tied up with some sort of complicated measure of trying to get rid of McCarthy in a debate about that.
The Senate bill, the cr that passed the Senate jack was eighty eight to nine after Senator Michael Bennett actually had it held up for a couple of hours over this very issue of Ukraine funding. And it seems he's cut a deal here, or at least there's been an informal agreement to vote separately on Ukraine aid, something Senator Lindsay Graham has also pursued what happens to the president's supplement or request here for Ukraine.
The path in the House is a lot more complicated than the Senate. A lot of Senators still support Ukraine aid, and really on a bipartisan basis in the House too, But the House is where the majority of the Republican Party seemed to pretty suddenly turn against aid for Ukraine.
We saw over a series of amendment votes over the last week the shift a very clear shift, in which case, the latest vote in the House on three hundred million dollars just a small portion of training aid to Ukraine ended up with only one hundred and one House Republicans in support and one hundred and seventeen House Republicans against. Now we have Speaker McCarthy saying that he supports sending aid, but it has to be tied to border securities and
immigration measures. The Conservative things on presumably asylum restrictions and the border wall and those to tie those together would be very, very difficult. Whereas Yes, in the Senate, maybe there's some skepticism among Republicans, but vowing a standalone vote is pretty straightforward. So really looking at McCarthy and the decisions he makes on how to pair this to border issues, that's the really complicating factor.
Well, Laura, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, was effectively overruled on this by the leadership, the Republican leadership when it came to the Continuing Resolution. I know that he and many others to Jack's points, support funding the war effort in Ukraine, But as this becomes more difficult, here, could we be in a world where that supplemental request is not granted.
It's certainly possible. Every time a must pass bill like the CR leaves the station without something attached to it, that's just another sort of sign that there's a possibility that this never happens.
There's all sorts of.
The floors of Congress are littered with a bunch of proposals that got left behind and then suddenly there wasn't political momentum to move them forward. Ukraine is certainly special and that it does have bipartisan support, you know, strong by partisan support in the Senate.
The House is where it's trickier.
This is though, this could be a highly complicating factor, both as we look to potentially a shutdown in mid November or you know, trying to break things out and move them their own is always tricky. Bundling things together builds coalitions in Congress. But this is a highly visible issue and an issue that a lot of people are against. You even look at polling, and this is what a lot of conservative Republicans are looking at saying, look, my
district doesn't care about Ukraine funding. And so that's the kind of thing that really causes lawmakers to dig their heels in and say no, I'm not voting for that.
I'm spending time with Laura Davison, Bloomberg Politics reporter, and Jack Fitzpatrick, Congress reporter at Bloomberg Government. I want to ask you lastly about a bit of drama that I haven't mentioned yet that unfolded over this weekend of voting, and that's Congressman Jameel Bowman, the Democrat from New York, made a decision to pull a fire alarm and was caught on security camera doing so. He says it was a mistake that he was trying to open a door.
Republicans say it was a move to delay a vote on the cr Of course, none of us here know the answer to that yet, but Speaker McCarthy didn't speak about it afterwards.
I was really appalled watching Democrats' actions today to delay it, to get into a shutdown. But when we found that an individual elected to Congress would pull a fire alarm, that's a new low. We watched how people have been treated if they've done something wrong in this capital. Be interesting to see how he is treated on what he was trying to obstruct.
When it came to the American public.
Jack, there've already been calls for Bowman's expulsion before he even had a chance to apologize or tell his side of the story. What's going to happen next with this?
Pere McCarthy directly said he wants the Ethics Committee to look into it. The Capitol Police got in touch with Jamal Bowman to ask what happened. It is a crime to purposefully pull a fire alarm, especially in a federal building if there's not a fire, so there's going to be some investigation. There are going to be questions that
he's going to have to answer. He put out a statement saying that the door that he usually walks out of was locked and it does have a sign on it saying a bit of a confusing message about how to get out, and it may set off an alarm. It would be surprising for anyone to pull a fire alarm separately to try to open that door. But he's going to try to make his case because he did say clearly he was confused by the signage on the
door that is usually not unlocked. But it will probably involve the Ethics Committee, and as I mentioned, the Capitol Police are at least asking questions about it.
As well, yeah, the Capitol Police saying it's investigating the incidents. It took place at twelve five pm on the second floor, prompting an evacuation order, pulling a firearm of fire alarm, I should say, as a misdemeanor in some jurisdictions. And he did meet Congressman Bowman with the Sergeant at Arms and Capitol Police to explain what happened. All right, So here we are we averted a shutdown I'm curious your
thoughts on the way forward here, of course, Laura. Are the odds the same lower or higher for a shutdown as we head for November seventeenth?
The odds are lower, but they're not as near zero as I think everyone would like.
What do you think, Jack, The odds are lower, and the big fights are how Republican leadership figures out how to move forward and conduct a whip count on all of the tough policy issues that they did not solve. This is not a real funding deal. It just gets them to November seventeenth. Republican leadership clearly does not want a shutdown, so I would say the odds are lower, but there are a ton of tough questions for them to answer in not very much time.
Well, many thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take, and thanks to Jack Fitzpatrick and Laura Davison here at Bloomberg for their insights our daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more shows from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you. Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg dot net. Our producers on today's show were James Mahoney and Juan Torres. I'm
Joe Matthew in Washington. Join us again tomorrow for another Big Take