Maybe — or maybe House Democrats and some of their Republican counterparts expect a rescue from the Senate. As everyone predicted, the latest attempt to pass a continuing resolution in the House failed, and it wasn’t even close. McCarthy’s promise to use it only as a means to get to regular order on appropriations didn’t convince the Freedom Caucus:

House GOP leaders on Friday failed to pass a partisan, short-term spending bill with fewer than two days left to fund the federal government and avoid a shutdown. The final vote was 198 to 232, with more than 20 Republicans crossing the aisle to oppose their own party’s bill.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy pitched the bill as a way for his fellow Republicans to buy time to pass a slate of individual agency spending bills.

McCarthy’s backers are blaming Matt Gaetz, but Gaetz is hardly alone in this vote. Gaetz has been the most vocally hostile figure to McCarthy, and has been threatening a motion to vacate over what Gaetz claims is McCarthy’s selling out on the budget, but the failure here seems broader than Gaetz’ influence. A list of the nays on this vote shows at least a few names that probably carry more weight than Gaetz in the caucus:

Final list of no votes, per @kristin__wilson
Biggs
Bishop
Boebert
Buck
Burchett
Burlison
Cloud
Crane
Gaetz
Gosar
Greene
Hunt
Mace
Miller (IL)
Mills
Mooney
Moore (AL)
Nehls
Ogles
Rosendale
Self

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) September 29, 2023

Without a CR, the government’s authorization to spend appropriated funds runs out this weekend. That leaves tomorrow for more potential votes, and McCarthy has apparently told the House to remain in DC. He plans to confer again with the caucus to see what can be drafted with enough support to pass:

McCarthy meeting with his members at 4p. He suggested to me he would reveal his next steps there. “No I am going to keep it all a secret,” he said jokingly. At the same time, House GOP leaders announced there would be votes tomorrow — hours before the federal govt shuts down.

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) September 29, 2023

But what about the Senate? They passed their own longer-term CR late yesterday, with wide bipartisan support. CNBC reports that the upper chamber may add a policy rider on immigration to sweeten the pot in the House, which would be ready for a vote tomorrow:

The Senate easily advanced its own short-term funding bill Thursday by a 76-22 margin. The next vote in that chamber is scheduled for Saturday.

The Senate bill is likely to be amended ahead of Saturday’s vote, and the next version could contain stronger border security measures that House Republicans are demanding.

That might solve a lot of problems for most of the GOP caucus, especially with binding language on better border control. Technically, McCarthy or the caucus could refuse to consider the Senate bill, and McCarthy has threatened to ignore it as a way to keep House Republicans’ leverage on the budget in play. Hakeem Jeffries has an answer for that, however:

Jeffries:
Everything is on the table including a discharge petition. We’ll find out more about that this weekend

— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) September 29, 2023

That would force a floor vote on whether to hold a vote on the Senate bill, and it would only take a majority to make it happen. House Democrats are only four votes shy of a majority, and there may be enough angry McCarthy supporters to force a vote down the throats of the House Freedom Caucus, just for spite as well as an easy way out of the dead-end into which the HFC seems to have led the caucus. On the other hand, Democrats may not have much interest in providing an easy out, especially if the immigration rider has actual teeth. A shutdown can be guaranteed to play worse for Republicans, even a brief one.

Does this mean we will have a shutdown this weekend? The odds are good in that direction, but what this means for now is that everyone’s playing eight-dimensional chicken. McCarthy and the HFC are playing chicken, with Gaetz egging it on. The House and Senate Republican caucuses are playing chicken. The House and Senate themselves are playing chicken. The frustrating part is the low-stakes conflict involved. While fiscal conservatives are rightly arguing that the House has to cut spending and stop deficit spending, this bill actually did have substantial cuts, albeit in ways that would not have survived the Senate:

House GOP will try today advance bill that cuts by at least 30%:
– Housing subsidies 4 poor
– Medical research 4 cancer etc
– SSA offices
– Nutrition aid 4 pregnant moms
– Head Start
– EPA
– NASA
– Justice Dept
– LIHEAP
– Toxic waste cleanup
– & much more

(Exempts DHS, VA, DOD)

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) September 29, 2023

And if deficit reduction is what’s wanted, no one is even talking about the only way to accomplish it — restructuring entitlement programs that drive most of the annual deficits and represent the entirety of the catastrophic unfunded mandates in our future. The MAGA caucus outright opposes entitlement reform, following Donald Trump’s lead and (to be fair) short-term electoral politics incentives. Instead of dealing with the actual structural issues of deficit and debt, they’re complaining about $300 million in spending for Ukraine aid in a trillion-dollar budget deficit.

I’d bet that the end result will be a last-minute CR of a shorter duration, either late Saturday or sometime Sunday. But a shutdown won’t surprise me either. Late rumors have the Senate floating a two-week “clean” CR to give McCarthy some breathing room, so keep an eye out for that.

Update: At one point, I referred to the Senate bill as the House bill. I’ve corrected it, and thanks to Twitter follower Matthew for the correction.