House Republicans are scrambling for a way forward while facing a likely government shutdown.
House Republicans left a closed-door conference meeting on Friday night frustrated and with no clear path forward on averting a government shutdown.
Government funding runs out at the end of the day today, and it’s all but certain that House and Senate lawmakers will not reach an agreement by midnight to stop nonessential government programs from grinding to a halt and thousands of federal workers from being furloughed.
« The problem is, is the holdouts aren’t offering any other options. The holdouts say, well why don’t we have a shutdown and [work on the appropriations process] as if all of a sudden, the messy democracy that makes appropriations process difficult in the first place is somehow going to resolve itself, » Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, told reporters when leaving the meeting. « It’s a f—ing democracy, it’s hard. And there’s no acknowledgment of that. »
A source in the room told Fox News Digital that the meeting was « very » tense as Republicans traded barbs over whom to blame for the current predicament.
At one point Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., heaped blame on moderate Republicans and rural district conservatives for sinking one of four appropriations bills the House voted on Thursday night, the source said.
One of those conservatives, Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, « stood up and said that’s bulls— and you know it, » the source said, adding that Feenstra said it « multiple times.
