Inside McCarthy’s deal with House Democrats to pass 11th-hour funding plan

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• John Yang:

  Good evening, I'm John Yang. On Capitol Hill lawmakers are taking 11th hour efforts to avoid a government shutdown at midnight tonight, right down to the wire. This afternoon, the House overwhelmingly passed a 45-day temporary spending bill after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, unable to overcome disagreements in his own party turned to House Democrats for help.

  In the more Democrats voted for the bill than Republicans. The measure includes the $16 billion of disaster relief money that President Biden wants, but not the aid for Ukraine that many House Republicans don't want. But that's only half of what's needed to avoid a shutdown. The Senate has to approve the bill too. And that could come as soon as tonight.

  After the House vote, McCarthy acknowledged that hardline Republicans could try to remove him from the speakership because he reached out to Democrats for help.

  Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House: When are you guys going to get over that it's all right that you put America first. That's all right if Republicans and Democrats joined together to do what is right? If somebody wants to make a motion against me, bring it. There has to be an adult in the room.

• John Yang:

  It has been a hectic and chaotic day on Capitol Hill. And as always, Congressional Correspondent Lisa Desjardins has been following all of it for us. Lisa, just 24 hours ago, it looked like a shutdown was inevitable.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Right.

• John Yang:

  And now here we are one step away, a Senate vote away from putting it off.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Right.

• John Yang:

  What happened?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Yeah. He said it would take a legislative miracle and our way we got one, it also needed a complete collapse of the House Republican Party, them realizing that they really did not have a plan at all, and that the only way out was either to go deeper in and cause a lengthy shutdown, or to have a simple continuing resolution to fund government that they thought would pass with many Democrats.

• John Yang:

  You just heard the Speaker say, bring it on, about a motion, what's called a motion to vacate, vacate the speakership. Do you think is that going to happen?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  I think it will. I don't know when. He is calling what he thinks is the bluff of those hardliners who oppose him. But it doesn't matter to them if they win or not. They have a point to make. They really do object to the Speaker. They have the ability, just single member to try and motion to vacate him. And if they do that, even if the vast majority of Republicans support Speaker McCarthy, the question is up to Democrats, because you need a majority of the House to elect a speaker. So Democrats can then sort of maneuver, maybe try and get something out for Speaker McCarthy to help him keep his job. It leads to a lot of other different plotlines.

• John Yang:

  Now, what's the outlook of the Senate right now?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  It looks good. Senators want to pass this deal. It's a question of when, how fast they can move? Senate not known for its exceeding speed. But tonight, they want to avoid this deadline. They don't want to shut down, even a Sunday one. As we speak right now they are asking every senator if they will object to speeding this up. And if in fact all senators give the green light we could have a vote within minutes or hours.

• John Yang:

  So if the Senate goes along, it's a 45-day reprieve, what has to happen or what — what they — what do they want to happen in that 45 days?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  So this is part of what this entire debate has been about, spending in general. In the house, they would like to pass all 12 appropriations bills. So far, they've passed five of them. So they still have a lot of work ahead of them. It takes a long time to get 400 members to debate all these appropriations bills, especially some of the more controversial ones that are ahead. They want to use that time to do that.

  And also, by the way, negotiate those bills with the Senate. We're not just talking dollars and the size of government, which in of itself is a very difficult debate, but also policy. These bills contain things about abortion, should abortion pills be allowed to be sold in the mail, for example. Those are intractable longtime debates that may take more than 45 days as well. But now they've got another 45 days to try and figure it out.

• John Yang:

  What does this — this past 24 hours tell us about the House Republicans, about the state of the House Republican Party?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  I think that it is what we expected. I think that we knew that this was a body that operates on instinct and not on plan. There is not really strategy. They have no problems with sort of internal debates that could even put the entire nation and government funding at risk. But it also tells us a lot about Kevin McCarthy. He is a Speaker who lives day by day. He is confident in his ability to make it through even the toughest test. But he doesn't have a plan for the next one. He takes them on one at a time, which means, John, you and I will be sitting here again, talking about similar dynamics ahead maybe even this week with the Speaker.

• John Yang:

  Let's remind people what the alternative was, if they — if the House, if the Senate, if they hadn't done this, what the alternative would have been and also what we'll be facing in 45 days?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Right. Well, the alternative they hadn't done this, we would have had a government shutdown starting tonight. That's 2 million federal workers, another 4 million federal contractors, many of whom would have been sent home, it could have gone long. And that would have meant maybe no paychecks from any of those people. Some services would have stopped like WIC, the Program for Women, Infants, and Children. And — and also Moody's Analytics and others could have downgraded our credit. So a lot was at stake and now we have to kind of see the next steps. Because all that is still hanging in the balance again, and this time getting closer to Thanksgiving.

• John Yang:

  Never a dull moment, Lisa Desjardins.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  I know.

• John Yang:

  Thank you very much.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  You're welcome.