House GOP pulls key vote on stopgap spending bill amid conservative opposition

House GOP leadership pulled a procedural vote on a proposed short-term funding stopgap that has bitterly divided the Republican conference and elicited opposition from hard-line conservatives.

The House was scheduled to vote at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday on the rule to allow the GOP continuing resolution (CR) proposal to move forward, but an update sent out shortly before noon did not list the procedural vote.

The Democratic Whip’s office confirmed that “The House GOP Leadership” made changes to the floor schedule. The office’s updated schedule did not include the rule vote.

The House could hold the procedural vote later in the day, but the postponement marks a setback for Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and GOP leadership, who hoped that the conference would coalesce around the stopgap proposal in order to increase their leverage in future negotiations with the Senate and White House.

Asked about pulling the rule Tuesday, McCarthy told reporters, “I’m just recircling it; we have people talking together.”

Pressed on when he would bring the rule to the floor, he responded, “It’s coming up.”

The turmoil around the partisan CR proposal is leaving House Republicans in a sticky situation that members widely agree has no clear way forward without further inflaming Republican tensions — and potentially threatening McCarthy's leadership.

The legislation, crafted by leaders in the Main Street Caucus and the House Freedom Caucus, would avert a government shutdown by extending government funding until Oct. 31 along with an 8 percent cut to all discretionary spending outside the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, plus the bulk of the House GOP’s H.R. 2 border crackdown bill that they passed earlier this year.

But upwards of a dozen GOP members — more than enough to sink the plan in the slim GOP majority — swiftly said they would oppose the legislation.