House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s last-ditch plan to temporarily keep the federal government open collapsed dramatically Friday when a robust faction of far-right holdouts rejected the package, making a shutdown all but certain.

Republicans on McCarthy’s right flank refused to support the bill, despite steep cuts of nearly 30% to many agencies and stringent border security provisions, calling it insufficient.

The White House and Democrats rejected the Republican approach as too extreme. The vote was 198 to 232, with 21 far-right Republicans voting to scuttle the package. The Democrats voted against.

The bills failed completely a day before Saturday’s deadline to fund the government, leaving few options to prevent a shutdown that will lay off federal workers.

force the army to keep the army

working without pay and disrupting programs and services for millions of Americans.

A clearly agitated McCarthy left the House chamber. It’s not the end yet; “I have other ideas,” he told reporters.

The outcome states the

McCarthys of the Bakersfield Republicans

his presidency is in serious jeopardy, leaving him with virtually no political leverage to lead the House of Representatives at a critical time that has plunged the government into crisis. Even the failed plan, an extraordinary concession to make immediate cuts

with a third

for many agencies this was not enough to satisfy the far-right flank

thumb-turned

his speakership.

Republican leaders planned to meet behind closed doors late Friday to discuss next steps.

The federal government is headed straight for a shutdown after midnight Saturday, leaving 2 million military troops without pay, laying off federal workers and disrupting the government services and programs that Americans rely on from coast to coast. Congress has failed to fund the agencies or pass a temporary bill to keep offices open.

The Senate on Friday pressed ahead with its own plan, favored by Republicans and Democrats, to keep the government open while boosting aid to Ukraine and U.S. disaster relief bills. But that doesn’t matter now that the House is in political chaos.

The White House has pushed back McCarthy’s overtures to meet with the president

Joe

Biden after the speaker walked away from the debt deal they brokered earlier this year that set budget levels.

Extreme House Republicans are now stumbling over their demands to destroy programs that millions of hardworking families rely on, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

Jean-Pierre said: The path forward to fund the government has been set by the Senate, with bipartisan support. The Republicans in the House of Representatives just have to follow it.

Focusing on his far-right flank, McCarthy had returned to the spending limits that Conservatives demanded in January as part of the deal that helped him become Speaker of the House of Representatives.

His package would not have made cuts to the Defense, Veterans or Homeland Security departments, but would have reduced nearly all other agencies by as much as 30% across a host of programs, services and departments that Americans routinely depend on.

It also added strict new border security provisions that would, among other things, boost construction of the wall on the southern border with Mexico. Furthermore, the package would have created a bipartisan party

debt

committee to tackle the country’s mounting debts

load

.

Ahead of the vote, the Republican chairman all but dared his colleagues to oppose the package a day before Saturday’s almost certain shutdown. The House bill would keep operations open through October. 31.

Each member will have to record where he or she stands, McCarthy said.

When asked if he had the votes, McCarthy joked, well look.

But as soon as floor debate began, McCarthy’s top Republican critic, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, announced he would vote against the package and urged his colleagues not to surrender.

The far right, led by Gaetz, is threatening McCarthy’s impeachment, with a looming vote to remove him from the speaker’s office unless he meets conservative demands. Still, it is unclear whether another Republican would have the support of the majority of the House of Representatives to lead the party.

Gaetz said afterward that McCarthy’s bill went down in flames, as I’ve been telling you all week.

He and others who reject the stopgap measure want the House instead to continue pushing through the 12 individual spending bills needed to fund the government, typically a weeks-long process, as they pursue their conservative priorities.

Some of the Republican holdouts, including Gaetz, are allies of Donald Trump, Biden’s main rival in 2024. The former president has

the

Republicans must fight hard for their priorities and even shut them down.

The margin of defeat shocked even Republican members.

Rep. Mike Garcia

(R-Santa Clarita) R-California,

said: I think what this does, I think it will rally people around the speaker and say, Hey, the dysfunction here doesn’t come from leadership in this case. The dysfunction comes from individuals not understanding the implications of what they did here.

Garcia said: For the people who say this isn’t good enough, I want to hear what good enough looks like.

Another Republican, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, a member of the Freedom Caucus who supported the package, suggested that the House of Representatives lost influence over the failed vote: “We control the finances. We just give them to the Senate relinquished.”

Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, criticized the proposed Republican cuts as hurting law enforcement, education and taking food out of the mouths of millions of people. She said 275,000 children would lose access to Head Start, making it harder for parents to work.

This is a senseless charade with serious consequences for the American people, DeLauro said.