Hardline shutdown push of the few frustrates US House Republicans

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A small group of hardline Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have set the federal government on a course towards its fourth partial shutdown in a decade, angering some members of their own caucus.

At least nine members of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's narrow 221-212 majority are refusing to back any stopgap measure to keep the government funded past midnight Saturday -- and threatening to try to oust him from leadership if he relies on Democratic votes to work around them.

That stands in sharp contrast to the Senate, where a bill to fund the government through Nov. 17 sailed over a first procedural hurdle this week in a bipartisan 77-19 vote.

"It's exceedingly frustrating," Representative Patrick McHenry told Reuters. The North Carolina Republican argued that a shutdown would leave them in a weak position when it comes to eventual negotiations with the Democratic-led Senate and President Joe Biden.

"We're the only Republicans in town who control anything. So we need to produce our legislative vehicles in order to get the best outcome we possibly can," McCarthy said. "If we can't do that, we're going to be left with a very bad hand."

To avoid a shutdown on Sunday, which would lead to the furlough of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, House and Senate must agree on a short-term continuing resolution or "CR" that would fund agency operations, giving lawmakers time to pass full-scale fiscal 2024 spending bills and hammer out compromise legislation that Biden can sign into law.

The shutdown threat has also caught the attention of Wall Street credit ratings agencies, who warn that repeated failures to fund the government could take a toll on its creditworthiness.

Facing pressure from his right flank, McCarthy is pursuing a partisan Republican CR that would cut current government funding levels and contain provisions on security and immigration at the U.S. border with Mexico.

Those proposals are unlikely to win the Democratic support they would need to pass the Senate, or to be signed by Biden.

HARDLINE HOLDOUTS

But Republican hardliners, including members of the House Freedom Caucus and allies of former President Donald Trump, are resisting even McCarthy's partisan plan. Instead they want Congress to pass a full slate of 12 appropriations bills. Since July, the House has passed only one.

"Hold the line! #NoCR," Representative Matt Rosendale said this week on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Representative Andy Biggs, a former Freedom Caucus chairman and another CR opponent, said any stopgap funding measure would be a "failure."

"That's not acceptable to our constituents and why I oppose any CR," Biggs said on X.

Past shutdowns have not paid political dividends for Republicans.

The record-setting, 34-day 2018 shutdown came weeks after Republicans lost their House majority during Trump's term. Two years later, voters booted Trump from the White House.

Hardliners including Representatives Matt Gaetz and Eli Crane have said on X that they are battling a "Uniparty" of Washington Democrats and Republicans.

Representative Dan Bishop, who is running for North Carolina state attorney general, said in a recent interview with conservative media that Republicans who backed a CR should face election challengers from within their own party.

Critics contend that some of the holdouts are simply trying to draw attention to their own campaigns for higher office.

"They're talking to a small portion of America," said Republican Representative Darrell Issa. He noted that the holdouts have not said if there were any possible changes that would secure their votes for a CR, despite McCarthy's efforts to create a measure that meets their demands.

That resistance makes it more likely that in the end the House will need to accept a more bipartisan bill, either the Senate's CR or a compromise bill proposed by the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.

"We should never let five or 10 people push us around like this. They have no alternative plan," said Representative Don Bacon, describing himself as a "pragmatic conservative." "They're caught up in an echo chamber, an echo chamber of group think."

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Timothy Gardner)