Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
With a government shutdown just nine days away, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) still can’t get his party’s act together.
After a nightmare week of being steamrolled by conservative hardliners, and subsequently slammed by fed-up moderates, McCarthy suffered another humiliating defeat on Thursday when a vote to bring a defense spending bill to the floor failed.
Funding the Pentagon is usually one of the easiest things for House Republicans to pass, and Thursday’s vote was, according to Politico, supposed to show that the party has a path to possibly passing a wider spending bill that would avert a government shutdown on Oct. 1.