US House fails to pass federal funding bill as shutdown deadline nears

A government funding package championed by Republican House speaker Mike Johnson failed to pass on Wednesday, with less than two weeks left to prevent a shutdown starting 1 October.

The final vote was 202 to 220, with 14 House Republicans and all but three House Democrats opposing the bill. Two Republican members voted “present”.

The bill was not expected to pass, as a number of House Republicans had voiced criticism of the proposal before the vote. Given Republicans’ narrow House majority and Democrats’ widespread opposition to the bill, Johnson could only afford a handful of defections within his conference. Johnson delayed a vote on the funding package last week in the hopes of consolidating Republicans’ support, but those efforts could not get the bill across the finish line.

Johnson’s proposed bill combined a six-month stopgap funding measure, known as a continuing resolution, with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act, a controversial proposal that would require people to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote.

Donald Trump, who has championed baseless claims of widespread non-citizen voting, has pressured Johnson to reject any funding measure unless it includes “election security” provisions, a stance that the former president doubled down on hours before the vote.

He said Wednesday on his social media platform, Truth Social: “If Republicans don’t get the SAVE Act, and every ounce of it, they should not agree to a Continuing Resolution in any way, shape, or form.”

Critics of the Save Act note that it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote, and they fear such a law would hinder legitimate voters’ efforts to cast their ballots. House Democrats remain overwhelmingly opposed to the proposal, and only three of them supported Johnson’s bill on Wednesday.

“Speaker Johnson must reject the most extreme voices in his party and quick move toward a four corners agreement so we can avoid a costly Republican-led shutdown,” said Pete Aguilar, the House Democratic caucus chair, on Wednesday. “The American people want to see an end to the chaos and division.”

Related: US House clashes over Harris’s role in 2021 Afghanistan troop withdrawal

With Johnson’s bill defeated, the speaker must find a new way to avoid a government shutdown weeks before election day. Members of both parties expect that Johnson will now turn his attention to a “clean” continuing resolution without the Save Act attached, although the speaker dismissed questions about any contingency plan before the vote on Wednesday.

“Let’s see what happens with the bill,” Johnson told reporters. “We’re on the field in the middle of the game. The quarterback is calling the play. We’re going to run the play.”

A number of the hard-right Republicans who voted against Johnson’s bill have signaled that they will reject any kind of continuing resolution, and they accused the speaker of holding a doomed vote only to justify his expected pivot to passing a clean funding bill.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right Republican representative from Georgia who ultimately voted “present” on Wednesday, attacked Johnson’s strategy as a “classic bait-and-switch that will enrage the base.

“Johnson is leading a fake fight that he has no intention of actually fighting,” Greene said Tuesday on X. “I refuse to lie to anyone that this plan will work and it’s already [dead on arrival] this week. Speaker Johnson needs to go to the Democrats, who he has worked with the entire time, to get the votes he needs to do what he is already planning to do.”

Even if Johnson’s bill had passed the House, the Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, made clear that the proposal faced no chance of passage in the upper chamber. In a floor speech delivered Wednesday, Schumer reiterated that only “bipartisan, bicameral cooperation” would prevent a shutdown next month.

“For the last two weeks, Speaker Johnson and House Republican leaders have wasted precious time on a proposal that everyone knows can’t become law. His own Republican conference cannot unite around his proposal,” Schumer said. “I hope that, once the speaker’s [continuing resolution] fails, he moves on to a strategy that will actually work: bipartisan cooperation. It’s the only thing that has kept the government open every time we have faced a funding deadline.”

At a press conference on Tuesday, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell issued a severe warning to House Republicans that a shutdown so close to election day could jeopardize the party’s standing with voters and thus cost them seats in Congress.

“The one thing you cannot have is a government shutdown,” McConnell said. “It would be, politically, beyond stupid for us to do that.”