“I think our members still want to fight. What that means, I don’t know. I don’t know that they know,” one senior House GOP leadership aide told CNN.
House Republican leaders huddled Thursday morning, but they won’t meet to discuss the next steps with their members until Saturday afternoon. The House had only one series of votes on Friday morning and members trickled out of the Capitol around 11 a.m. and left for the day, more than an hour before the Senate began voting on the spending bill.
In past down-to- the wire showdowns over government funding there were quiet backroom discussions among party leaders and top aides in the House and Senate to come up with some sort of face-saving compromise. But this time there were no signs those talks were happening.
The one thing Boehner made clear on Thursday was that the House will not accept the Senate version of the spending bill that stripped out the provision that defunds Obamacare. He indicated the House will add something to the bill and send it back to the Senate, but refused to tip his hand on what exactly that will be.
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