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  • Government on brink of shutdown ahead of midnight deadline as McCarthy slates last-minute vote | CNN Politics

    Government on brink of shutdown ahead of midnight deadline as McCarthy slates last-minute vote | CNN Politics

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    CNN
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    Federal agencies are making final preparations with the government on the brink of a shutdown and congressional lawmakers racing against Saturday’s critical midnight deadline – as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy mounts a last-minute push to avert the lapse in funding.

    McCarthy announced that the House will vote on a 45-day short-term spending bill Saturday, and it will include the natural disaster aid that the White House requested.

    The bill does not include $6 billion in funding to aid Ukraine, a key concession that many House Republicans demanded and a blow to allies of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who lobbied Congress earlier this month for additional assistance.

    Asked if he is concerned that a member, including Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, could move to oust him over this bill, McCarthy replied, “If I have to risk my job for standing up for the American public, I will do that.”

    Infighting among House Republicans has played a central role in bringing Congress to a standoff over spending – and it is not yet clear how the issue will be resolved, raising concerns on Capitol Hill that a shutdown, if triggered, may not be easy to end.

    Democrats in the House have been trying to slow down passage of the GOP-led continuing resolution throughout the day Saturday, objecting to being forced to vote on a bill just introduced and wanting to keep Ukraine aid. It’s unclear how long Democrats will stall the House from voting.

    House Republicans met throughout Saturday morning, seesawing between options for how to proceed. Republicans including veteran appropriators and those in swing districts pushed to bring a short-term resolution to keep the government funded for 45 days to the House floor for a vote Saturday.

    McCarthy has faced threats to keeping his job throughout the month if he works with Democrats as he endures a consistent resistance from the hardline conservatives in his own party.

    A shutdown is expected to have consequential impacts across the country, from air travel to clean drinking water, and many government operations would grind to a halt – though services deemed essential for public safety would continue.

    Both chambers are scheduled to be in session Saturday, just hours before the deadline. The Senate was expected to take procedural steps to advance their own plan to keep the government funded – GOP Sen. Rand Paul had vowed all week to slow that process beyond the midnight deadline over objections to the bill’s funding for the war in Ukraine. The Senate is now waiting to see how the House developments shake out before proceeding.

    But Paul told CNN on Saturday afternoon that he won’t slow down the Senate’s consideration of the House GOP’s 45-day spending bill, if it passes the House and the Senate takes it up, allowing the Senate the ability to move the bill quickly – though any one other senator could slow that down beyond the midnight deadline.

    House Republicans have so far thrown cold water on a bipartisan Senate proposal to keep the government funded through November 17, but they have failed to coalesce around a plan of their own to avert a shutdown amid resistance from a bloc of hardline conservatives to any kind of short-term funding extension.

    “After meeting with House Republicans this evening, it’s clear the misguided Senate bill has no path forward and is dead on arrival,” McCarthy wrote on X. “The House will continue to work around the clock to keep government open and prioritize the needs of the American people.”

    His late Friday night message came after a two-hour conference meeting in the Capitol, where McCarthy floated several different options – including putting the Senate bill on the floor or passing a short-term bill that excludes Ukraine money. But there is still no consensus on what – if anything – they will put on the House floor Saturday to avoid a government shutdown.

    McCarthy suffered another high-profile defeat on Friday when the House failed to advance a last-ditch stopgap bill.

    In the aftermath of Friday’s failed vote, McCarthy told reporters he had proposed putting up a “clean” stopgap bill, and said he was “working through maybe to be able to do that.”

    “We’re continuing to work through – trying to find the way out of this,” McCarthy said.

    The Senate’s bipartisan bill would provide additional funds for Ukraine aid, creating a point of contention with the House where many Republicans are opposed to further support to the war-torn country.

    McCarthy argued on Friday that aid to Ukraine should be dropped from the Senate bill. “I think if we had a clean one without Ukraine on it, we could probably be able to move that through. I think if the Senate puts Ukraine on there and focuses on Ukraine over America, I think that could cause real problems,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju.

    The Senate, meanwhile, is working to advance its own bipartisan stopgap bill. The chamber is on track to take a procedural vote Saturday afternoon to move forward with the bill, particularly if the last-minute House bill falters. But it’s not yet clear when senators could take a final vote to pass the bill and it may not happen until Monday, after the government has already shut down.

    Border security has also become a complicating factor for the Senate bill as many Republicans now want to see the bill amended to address the issue.

    Senate Republicans said Friday that they were still discussing what kind of border amendment they would want to add to the bill, and were unsure if the chamber could even advance the bill in Saturday’s procedural vote without the addition of a border amendment.

    “Nothing’s really coming together, too many moving parts at this stage,” said Sen. Mike Braun, an Indiana Republican. “I think what I understand is we’re going to have a vote tomorrow … and other than that, there’s nothing that’s really crystallized in anything that probably would be palatable with the House.”

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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  • McCarthy’s last-ditch plan to keep the government open collapses, making a shutdown almost certain

    McCarthy’s last-ditch plan to keep the government open collapses, making a shutdown almost certain

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    WASHINGTON — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s last-ditch plan to keep the federal government temporarily open collapsed in dramatic fashion Friday as a robust faction of hard-right holdouts rejected the package, making a shutdown almost certain.

    McCarthy’s right-flank Republicans refused to support the bill despite its steep spending cuts of nearly 30% to many agencies and severe border security provisions, calling it insufficient.

    The White House and Democrats rejected the Republican approach as too extreme. The vote was 198-232, with 21 hard-right Republicans voting to sink the package. The Democrats voted against it.

    The bill’s complete failure a day before Saturday’s deadline to fund the government leaves few options to prevent a shutdown that will furlough federal workers, keep the military working without pay and disrupt programs and services for millions of Americans.

    A clearly agitated McCarthy left the House chamber. “It’s not the end yet; I’ve got other ideas,” he told reporters.

    The outcome puts McCarthy’s speakership in serious jeopardy with almost no political leverage to lead the House at a critical moment that has pushed the government into crisis. Even the failed plan, an extraordinary concession to immediately slash spending by one-third for many agencies, was not enough to satisfy the hard-right flank that has upturned his speakership.

    The federal government is heading straight into a shutdown after midnight Saturday that would leave 2 million military troops without pay, furlough federal workers and disrupt government services and programs that Americans rely on from coast to coast. Congress has been unable to fund the agencies or pass a temporary bill to keep offices open.

    The Senate was pushing ahead Friday with its own plan favored by Republicans and Democrats to keep the government open while also bolstering Ukraine aid and U.S. disaster accounts. But that won’t matter with the House in political chaos.

    The White House has brushed aside McCarthy’s overtures to meet with President Joe Biden after the speaker walked away from the debt deal they brokered earlier this year that set budget levels.

    “Extreme House Republicans are now tripling down on their demands to eviscerate programs millions of hardworking families count on,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

    Jean-Pierre said, “The path forward to fund the government has been laid out by the Senate with bipartisan support — House Republicans just need to take it.”

    Catering to his hard-right flank, McCarthy had returned to the spending limits the conservatives demanded back in January as part of the deal-making to help him become the House speaker.

    His package would not have cut the Defense, Veterans or Homeland Security departments but would have slashed almost all other agencies by up to 30% — steep hits to a vast array of programs, services and departments Americans routinely depend on.

    It also added strict new border security provisions that would kickstart building the wall at the southern border with Mexico, among other measures. Additionally, the package would have set up a bipartisan debt commission to address the nation’s mounting debt load.

    Ahead of voting, the Republican speaker all but dared his holdout colleagues to oppose the package a day before Saturday’s almost certain shutdown. The House bill would have kept operations open through Oct. 31.

    “Every member will have to go on record where they stand,” McCarthy said.

    Asked if he had the votes, McCarthy said, “We’ll see.”

    But as soon as the floor debate began, McCarthy’s chief Republican critic, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, announced he would be voting against the package, urging his colleagues to “not surrender.”

    The hard right, led by Gaetz, has been threatening McCarthy’s ouster, with a looming vote to try to remove him from the speaker’s office unless he meets the conservative demands. Still, it’s unclear if any other Republican would have support from the House majority to lead the party.

    Gaetz said afterward that the speaker’s bill “went down in flames as I’ve told you all week it would.”

    He and others rejecting the temporary measure want the House to instead keep pushing through the 12 individual spending bills needed to fund the government, typically a weeks-long process, as they pursue their conservative priorities.

    Some of the Republican holdouts, including Gaetz, are allies of Donald Trump, who is Biden’s chief rival in 2024. The former president has been encouraging the Republicans to fight hard for their priorities and even to “shut it down.”

    The margin of defeat shocked even Republican members.

    Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., said: “I think what this does, if anything, I think it’s going to rally people around the speaker and go: ‘Hey, the dysfunction here is not coming from leadership in this case. The dysfunction is coming from individuals that don’t understand the implications of what we’re doing here.’”

    Garcia said, “For the people that claim this isn’t good enough, I want to hear what good enough looks like.”

    Another Republican, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, a member of the Freedom Caucus who supported the package, suggested the House was losing its leverage with the failed vote: “We control the purse strings. We just ceded them to the Senate.”

    Republicans convened for a closed-door meeting later Friday afternoon that grew heated, lawmakers said, but failed to produce a new plan. Leaders announced the House would stay in session next week, rather than return home, to keep working on some of the 12 spending bills.

    Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, criticized the proposed Republican cuts as hurting law enforcement and education and taking food out of the mouths of millions. She said 275,000 children would lose access to Head Start, making it harder for parents to work.

    “This is a pointless charade with grave consequences for the American people,” DeLauro said.

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  • Looming shutdown rattles families who rely on Head Start program for disadvantaged children

    Looming shutdown rattles families who rely on Head Start program for disadvantaged children

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    KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As Monette Ferguson braces for the looming government shutdown to strip funding from her Head Start program for disadvantaged children in Connecticut, she harkens back to a decade ago when another congressional budget fight forced her to close preschools.

    This time around she is more prepared, with money in reserve to keep serving around 550 children at 14 Head Start sites operating in three different towns. But only for about 30 days.

    “It’s like a gut punch to our system,” said Ferguson, who is the executive director of the Alliance for Community Empowerment.

    If the shutdown isn’t averted, Head Start programs serving more than 10,000 children would immediately lose federal funding, including Ferguson’s program. Lawmakers have until Saturday to reach a deal, but that is looking less and less likely.

    The programs set to lose money serve just a fraction of the 820,000 children enrolled nationally at any given time. Located in Florida, Alabama, Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts and South Carolina, they are in trouble because their grants start on Sunday, just as the shutdown would begin, said Tommy Sheridan, the deputy director for the National Head Start Association.

    They wouldn’t necessarily close their doors immediately. Various entities run the programs, including school districts, YMCAs and other nonprofits. Depending on how deep their pockets are, some of these operators, like Ferguson’s program, could readjust their finances to keep the programs going, at least short term.

    “But from the ones that I’ve spoken to, there are some that really don’t have extensive possibilities,” Sheridan said.

    Many are located in poor communities, close to the families they seek to lift out of poverty with programs that include preschool as well as services to infants and toddlers that include home visits. Over the course of a year, as children come and go, the number served tops 1 million.

    Programs whose grants don’t start on Sunday will continue getting money, said Bobby Kogan, the senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. But, he said, if the shutdown drags on, the number of affected programs will grow as more grants come up up for renewal.

    “This will get worse and worse and worse,” he said.

    That’s what worries Lori Milam, executive director of the West Virginia Head Start. One of its grants is up for renewal in November, so she’s been making back-up plans and reassuring worried staff and parents.

    “It’s consuming an enormous amount of our time,” she said.

    Complicating the situation further, one budget proposal would cut $750 million from the nearly $12 billion program, which would eliminate tens of thousands of spots. All the uncertainty has spooked some workers into considering looking for what “they believe is a more stable job,” said Philip Shelly, a spokesperson for Democratic U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, of Illinois.

    This is a particular concern with nearly 20% of Head Start staff positions vacant nationwide, according to the National Head Start Association.

    The timing couldn’t be worse. Child care programs were propped up during the pandemic with $24 billion in federal relief, but the last of the money has to be spent by Saturday. Another pot of COVID-19 relief funds that helped Head Start ran out in the spring.

    Some states, like Minnesota, New York and Maine, have chipped in extra money to fill in the gaps as the federal funding dries up, but those efforts are not universal, said Maureen Coffey, a policy analyst on the early childhood policy team at the Center for American Progress.

    “It’s going to be a really messy time for child care,” she said.

    Child care already was strained before the pandemic closed some centers, said Lynn Karoly, a senior economist at the Rand Corp., a nonprofit global policy think tank.

    “We haven’t addressed really, in most cases, the fundamental problem of an underfunded system overall,” she said. “But now you have the potential of a shutdown on top of it.”

    The 16-day October 2013 shutdown was the last to hit Head Start hard, affecting 19,000 children and shuttering programs in several states.

    About half as many programs are affected now because many moved away from having their grant start date coincide with the beginning of the federal fiscal year. One reason, Sheridan said, is that the Oct. 1 date makes them more vulnerable when Congress deadlocks over the budget.

    It was so bad a decade ago that Connecticut chipped in emergency funds, which allowed Ferguson’s program to reopen.

    Meanwhile, John and Laura Arnold, a wealthy Houston couple, pledged up to $10 million to the National Head Start Association to help other programs. Among the programs the donation helped reopen was one in Florida.

    Tim Center, the chief executive officer at the Capital Area Community Action Agency, lived through that mess. This time around he has a backup plan that will allow him to keep serving more than 370 kids and families at six centers in three counties in northern Florida for several weeks. But it means tapping into savings and a line of credit.

    Families still are spooked. Laketia Washington, a mother of eight whose 3- and 5-year-olds attend Head Start programs in Tallahassee, Florida, lamented the turmoil as she rang up customers at a discount store.

    “The nerve wracking thing,” she said, “is not knowing what’s next.”

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  • McCarthy rejects Senate spending bill while scrambling for a House plan that averts a shutdown

    McCarthy rejects Senate spending bill while scrambling for a House plan that averts a shutdown

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    WASHINGTON — A government shutdown appeared all but inevitable as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy dug in Thursday, vowing he will not take up Senate legislation designed to keep the federal government fully running despite House Republicans’ struggle to unite around an alternative.

    Congress is at an impasse just days before a disruptive federal shutdown that would halt paychecks for many of the federal government’s roughly 2 million employees, as well as 2 million active-duty military troops and reservists, furlough many of those workers and curtail government services.

    But the House and Senate are pursuing different paths to avert those consequences even though time is running out before government funding expires after midnight on Saturday.

    “I still got time. I’ve got time to do other things,” McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol Thursday evening, adding, “At the end of the day, we’ll get it all done.”

    The Senate is working toward passage of a bipartisan measure that would fund the government until Nov. 17 as longer-term negotiations continue, while also providing $6 billion for Ukraine and $6 billion for U.S. disaster relief.

    The House, meanwhile, has teed up votes on four of the dozen annual spending bills that fund various agencies in hopes that would cajole enough Republicans to support a House-crafted continuing resolution that temporarily funds the government and boosts security at the U.S. border with Mexico. It’s a longshot, but McCarthy predicted a deal.

    Lawmakers already weary from days of late-night negotiating had another long night of voting ahead. The strain was evident at McCarthy’s closed-door meeting with Republicans Thursday morning, which was marked by a tense exchange between the speaker and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., according to those in the room.

    Gaetz, who has taunted McCarthy for weeks with threats to oust him from his post, confronted the speaker about conservative online influencers being paid to post negative things about him. McCarthy shot back that he wouldn’t waste his time on something like that, Gaetz told reporters as he exited the meeting.

    McCarthy’s allies left the meeting fuming about Gaetz’s tactics.

    With his majority splintering, McCarthy is scrambling to come up with a plan for preventing a shutdown and win Republican support. The speaker told Republicans he would reveal a Republican stopgap plan, known as a continuing resolution or CR, on Friday, according to those in the room, while also trying to force Senate Democrats into giving some concessions.

    But with time running out, many GOP lawmakers were either withholding support for a temporary measure until they had a chance to see it. Others are considering joining Democrats, without McCarthy’s support, to bring forward a bill that would prevent a shutdown.

    With his ability to align his conference in doubt, McCarthy has little standing to negotiate with Senate Democrats. He has also attempted to draw President Joe Biden into negotiations, but the White House, so far, has shown no interest.

    Biden sought to apply more pressure on McCarthy, urging him to compromise with Democrats even though that could threaten his job.

    “I think that the speaker is making a choice between his speakership and American interests,” Biden said.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Congress and the White House had already worked out top-line spending levels for next year with an agreement this summer that allowed the government to continue borrowing to pay its bills. But McCarthy was deviating from that deal and courting a shutdown by catering to Republicans who say it didn’t do enough to cut spending, he said.

    “By focusing on the views of the radical few instead of the many, Speaker McCarthy has made a shutdown far more likely,” Schumer said.

    McCarthy insisted in a CNBC interview that the House will have its say. “Will I accept and surrender to what the Senate decides? The answer is no, we’re our own body.”

    But later at the Capitol, he openly complained about the difficulty he is having herding Republican lawmakers.

    “Members say they only want to vote for individual bills, but they hold me up all summer and won’t let me bring individual bills up. Then they say they won’t vote for a stopgap measure that keeps government open,” McCarthy told reporters.

    “So I don’t know, where do you go in that scenario?”

    The speaker also hinted he has a backup plan but gave no indication he was ready to work with Democrats to pass something in the House.

    Meanwhile, the White House, as well as the Department of Homeland Security, notified staff on Thursday to prepare for a shutdown, according to emails obtained by The Associated Press. Employees who are furloughed would have four hours on Monday to prepare their offices for the shutdown.

    The White House plans to keep on all commissioned officers. That includes chief of staff Jeff Zients, press secretary Karine Jean Pierre, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and other senior-level personnel, by declaring them “excepted” during a shutdown, according to the White House email.

    Military troops and federal workers, including law enforcement officers, air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration officers, will also report to work because they are essential to protecting life and property. They would miss paychecks if the shutdown lasts beyond Oct. 13, the next scheduled payday, though they are slated to receive backpay once any shutdown ends.

    Social Security payments for seniors, Medicare and Medicaid payments to health care providers, and disability payments to veterans will continue, as much of the government will continue to function. But there will be critical services that do stop. For example, the U.S. Treasury says that, with two-thirds of IRS employees potentially furloughed, taxpayer phone calls to the agency will go unanswered and 363 Taxpayer Assistance Centers across the country will close.

    Many Republicans have voiced fears they would be blamed for a shutdown — including in the Senate, where many GOP members are aligned with Democrats on a temporary bill.

    Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said he agrees with many of the goals of the House Republicans, but he warned a shutdown will not achieve any of them.

    “Instead of producing any meaningful policy outcomes, it would actually take the important progress being made on a number of key issues and drag it backward,” McConnell said.

    Nevertheless, Senate Republicans huddled for much of the day to cobble together a plan that could win support to boost funding for border security. McCarthy’s House allies were also hoping the threat of a shutdown could help conservatives with their push to limit federal spending and combat illegal immigration at the U.S-Mexico border.

    “Anytime you have a stopgap situation like this, you have an opportunity to leverage,” said Rep. Garret Graves, R-La. “This is another opportunity. America does not want an open Southern border. The polls are crystal clear. It’s having a profound impact on us.”

    __

    Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim and Fatima Hussein contributed reporting.

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  • With a government shutdown just days away, Congress is moving into crisis mode

    With a government shutdown just days away, Congress is moving into crisis mode

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    WASHINGTON — With a government shutdown five days away, Congress is moving into crisis mode as Speaker Kevin McCarthy faces an insurgency from hard-right Republicans eager to slash spending even if it means curtailing federal services for millions of Americans.

    There’s no clear path ahead as lawmakers return with tensions high and options limited. The House is expected to vote Tuesday evening on a package of bills to fund parts of the government, but it’s not at all clear that McCarthy has the support needed to move ahead.

    Meanwhile, the Senate, trying to stave off a federal closure, is preparing its own bipartisan plan for a stopgap measure to buy some time and keep offices funded past Saturday’s deadline as work in Congress continues. But plans to tack on additional Ukraine aid have run into trouble as a number of Republicans in both the House and Senate oppose spending more money on the war effort.

    Against the mounting chaos, President Joe Biden warned the Republican conservatives off their hardline tactics, saying funding the federal government is “one of the most basic fundamental responsibilities of Congress.”

    Biden implored the House Republicans not to renege on the debt deal he struck earlier this year with McCarthy, which set the federal government funding levels and was signed into law after approval by both the House and Senate.

    “We made a deal, we shook hands, and said this is what we’re going to do. Now, they’re reneging on the deal,” Biden said late Monday.

    “If Republicans in the House don’t start doing their jobs, we should stop electing them.”

    A government shutdown would disrupt the U.S. economy and the lives of millions of Americans who work for the government or rely on federal services — from air traffic controllers who would be asked to work without pay to some 7 million people in the Women, Infants and Children program, including half the babies born in the U.S., who could lose access to nutritional benefits, according to the White House.

    It comes against the backdrop of the 2024 elections as Donald Trump, the leading Republican to challenge Biden, is egging on the Republicans in Congress to “shut it down” and undo the deal McCarthy made with Biden.

    Republicans are also being encouraged by former Trump officials, including those who are preparing to slash government and the federal workforce if the former president retakes the White House in the 2024 election. With five days to go before Saturday’s deadline, the turmoil is unfolding as House Republicans hold their first Biden impeachment inquiry hearing this week probing the business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden.

    “Unless you get everything, shut it down!” Trump wrote in all capital letters on social media. “It’s time Republicans learned how to fight!”

    McCarthy arrived at the Capitol early Monday after a tumultuous week in which a handful of hard-right Republicans torpedoed his latest plans to advance a usually popular defense funding bill. They brought the chamber to a standstill and leaders sent lawmakers home for the weekend with no endgame in sight.

    After the House Rules Committee met Saturday to prepare for this week’s voting, McCarthy was hopeful the latest plan on a package of four bills, to fund Defense, Homeland Security, Agriculture, and State and Foreign Operations, would kickstart the process.

    “Let’s get this going,” McCarthy said. “Let’s make sure the government stays open while we finish our job passing all the individual bills.”

    But at least one top Trump ally, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who is also close to McCarthy, said she would be a “hard no” on the vote to open debate, known as the Rule, because the package of bills continues to provide at least $300 million for the war in Ukraine.

    Other hard-right conservatives and allies of Trump may follow her lead.

    “Now you have a couple of new people thinking about voting against the Rule,” said Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., referring to the upcoming procedural vote.

    Once a holdout himself, Buck told reporters at the Capitol he would be voting for the package, but he’s not sure McCarthy will have enough for passage. “I don’t know if he gets them back on board or not,” Buck said.

    While their numbers are just a handful, the hard-right Republican faction holds oversized sway because the House majority is narrow and McCarthy needs almost every vote from his side for partisan bills without Democratic support.

    The speaker has given the holdouts many of their demands, but it still has not been enough as they press for more — including gutting funding for Ukraine, which President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Washington last week is vital to winning the war against Russia.

    The hardline Republicans want McCarthy to drop the deal he made with Biden and stick to earlier promises for spending cuts he made to them in January to win their votes for the speaker’s gavel, citing the nation’s rising debt load.

    Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a key Trump ally leading the right flank, said on Fox that a shutdown is not optimal but “it’s better than continuing on the current path that we are to America’s financial ruin.”

    Gatez, who has also threated to call a vote to oust McCarthy from his job, wants Congress to do what it rarely does anymore: debate and approve each of the 12 annual bills needed to fund the various departments of government — typically a process that takes weeks, if not months.

    “I’m not pro-shutdown,” he said. But he said he wants to hold McCarthy “to his word.”

    Even if the House is able to complete its work this week on some of those bills, which is highly uncertain, they would still need to be merged with similar legislation from the Senate, another lengthy process.

    Meantime, senators have been drafting a temporary measure, called a continuing resolution or CR, to keep government funded past Saturday, but have run into trouble trying to tack on Biden’s request for supplemental funding for Ukraine. They face resistance from a handful of Republicans to the war effort.

    A Senate aide said talks would continue through the night. And a spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget said the administration would continue to work with members of both parties in Congress to secure supplemental funds and ensure efforts to support Ukraine continue alongside other key priorities like disaster relief.

    With just days remaining before a shutdown, several of the holdouts say they will never vote for any stopgap measure to fund the government as they push for Congress to engage in the full-scale debate.

    ___ Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim, Kevin Freking and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

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  • White House strategy on government funding meets serious test this week | CNN Politics

    White House strategy on government funding meets serious test this week | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden and his top aides at the White House plan to hammer away at a blunt message as the US government inches closer to a shutdown this week: A handful of extremist Republicans are entirely to blame for the havoc that would be unleashed across the country.

    For Biden, there’s a lot riding on that message getting through to Americans.

    Biden’s advisers have been assessing for weeks how involved to get in lawmakers’ deliberations to fund the government ahead of the end-of-month deadline, and ultimately decided to take a hands-off approach. The expectation: Should the Republican-led House struggle to reach consensus, they would ultimately shoulder the blame for any disruption.

    “Watch the GOP struggle and force them to govern or be blamed for shutdown,” a Biden administration official said, summing up the strategy.

    The White House is planning to dispatch a number of Cabinet officials this week to help lay out the broad range of ramifications if the government were to shutdown – everything from flight delays to childcare centers shutting down.

    Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will appear at Monday’s White House news briefing to discuss how a government shutdown could hit everything from food programs to loans for farmers, a White House official said.

    “This would stop us in our tracks,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on CNN on Sunday. “A shutdown that would mean service members wouldn’t get paid, coming back to transportation to air traffic controllers who would be working in the towers. They wouldn’t get paid.”

    Over the weekend, White House officials continued to monitor for any signs of movement on Capitol Hill to extend funding for the federal government ahead of the deadline. How to handle a possible shutdown was a key agenda item when White House chief of staff Jeff Zients huddled with senior advisers in the West Wing on Saturday, according to people familiar. But heading into a new work week, Republican members had not put anything realistic on the table, officials said, leaving the White House bracing for what is to come.

    In the days ahead, the president and his allies will repeatedly point to “who’s responsible” for the mess that could unfold, one senior administration official said simply.

    The White House took a similar approach this spring during the debt ceiling negotiations, but not without a seeming hit to Biden. In a CNN poll conducted mid-May, 59% of respondents said the president was not acting responsibly as talks stalled and the government careened toward default. The difference then: Republicans had coalesced around a specific position, passing a bill in the House that reflected their priorities and catching the White House off guard. Negotiations escalated in the weeks that followed, resulting in a deal that set broad guardrails around federal spending for the 2024 fiscal year.

    That deal was supposed to usher in months of in-depth appropriations work that would yield a full-year spending package and avert a government shutdown. Now, the White House says Republicans dropped the ball.

    Speaking over the weekend at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Phoenix Awards Dinner, Biden said it was “small group of extreme Republicans” that was refusing to “live up to the deal” that he had struck months ago with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

    “The president did his job,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked whether the White House would do anything to stave off a shutdown. “This is not something we can fix. The best plan is for House Republicans to stop their partisan political play and not do this to hurt Americans across the country. That’s the plan.”

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  • The Biden administration is poised to allow Israeli citizens to travel to the US without a US visa

    The Biden administration is poised to allow Israeli citizens to travel to the US without a US visa

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    WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is poised to admit Israel this week into an exclusive club that will allow its citizens to travel to the United States without a U.S. visa despite Washington’s ongoing concerns about the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinian Americans.

    U.S. officials say an announcement of Israel’s entry into the Visa Waiver Program is planned for late in the week, just before the end of the federal budget year on Saturday, which is the deadline for Israel’s admission without having to requalify for eligibility next year.

    The Department of Homeland Security administers the program, which currently allows citizens of 40 mostly European and Asian countries to travel to the U.S. for three months without visas.

    Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is set to make the announcement Thursday, shortly after receiving a recommendation from Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel be admitted, according to five officials familiar with the matter who spoke Sunday on condition of anonymity because the decision has not yet been publicly announced.

    Blinken’s recommendation is expected to be delivered no later than Tuesday, the officials said, and the final announcement will come just eight days after President Joe Biden met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. The leaders did not raise the issue in their brief remarks to reporters at that meeting but it has been a subject of intense negotiation and debate for months as has been the Biden administration’s effort to secure a deal to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

    Both State and the Homeland Security departments said they had “nothing to announce publicly at this time,” adding that the two agencies will make a “final determination in the coming days.” The U.S. is working with Israel toward “fulfilling the full range of law enforcement, national security, and immigration related requirements” of the program, according to the State Department.

    Israel’s admission has been a priority for successive Israeli leaders and will be a major accomplishment for Netanyahu, who has sparred frequently with the Biden administration over Iran, the Palestinian conflict and most recently a proposed remake of Israel’s judicial system that critics say will make the country less democratic.

    Netanyahu’s far-right government has drawn repeated U.S. criticism over its treatment of Palestinians, including its aggressive construction of West Bank settlements, its opposition to Palestinian statehood and incendiary anti-Palestinian comments by senior Cabinet ministers.

    The U.S. move will give a welcome boost at home to Netanyahu. He has faced months of mass protests against his judicial plan and is likely to come under criticism from the Palestinians, who say the U.S. should not be rewarding the Israeli government at a time when peace efforts are at a standstill.

    Israel met two of the three most critical criteria over the past two years — a low percentage of visa application rejections and a low visa overstay rate — to join the U.S. program. It had struggled to meet the third, which is a requirement for reciprocity that means all U.S. citizens, including Palestinian Americans, must be treated equally when traveling to or through Israel.

    Claiming national security reasons, Israel has long had separate entry requirements and screening processes for Palestinian Americans. Many complained that the procedures were onerous and discriminatory. Americans with Palestinian residency documents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were largely barred from using Israel’s international airport. Instead, like other Palestinians, they were forced to travel through either Jordan or Egypt to reach their destinations.

    In recent months, Israel has moved to adjust its entry requirements for Palestinian Americans, including allowing them to fly in and out of Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv and going directly to the West Bank and Israel proper, according to the officials. Israel also has pledged to ease movement for Palestinian Americans traveling in and out of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

    New regulations took effect earlier this month to codify the changes, although concerns remain and the Homeland Security Department intends to stress in its announcement that it will continue to monitor the situation to ensure that Israel complies, according to the officials. Failure to comply could result in Israel’s suspension from the program, the officials said.

    Palestinian American activists have been critical of the impending decision, which has been expected for some time due to the priority placed on it by both the Israeli and U.S. governments.

    “There are so many problems with this decision,” said Yousef Munayyer, the head of the Palestine-Israel Program and senior fellow at Arab Center Washington. “The reciprocity requirement is clearly still not being met since Israeli policy continues to treat some Americans, specifically Palestinian Americans, differently. The administration however seems committed at the highest levels to overlooking this continued discrimination against American citizens to rush Israel into the program before the deadline.”

    Munayyer said it was “unclear why the Biden administration seems dead set on offering political victories for Benjamin Netanyahu at a time when his far-right government is outraging Palestinians and many Israelis with their extremist agenda.”

    Under the waiver program, Israelis will be able to travel to the U.S. for business or leisure purposes for up to 90 days without a visa simply by registering with the Electronic System for Travel Authorization.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

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  • High-speed rail was touted as a game-changer in Britain. Costs are making the government think twice

    High-speed rail was touted as a game-changer in Britain. Costs are making the government think twice

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    LONDON — The British government confirmed Sunday it may scrap a big chunk of an overdue and over-budget high-speed rail line once touted as a way to attract jobs and investment to northern England.

    British media reported that an announcement is expected this week that the line will end in Birmingham – 100 miles (160 kilometers) from London — rather than further north in Manchester.

    The Conservative government insists no final decision has been made about the embattled High Speed 2 project.

    But Cabinet minister Grant Shapps said it was “proper and responsible” to reconsider a project whose costs have ballooned because of high inflation driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

    “We’ve seen very, very high global inflation in a way that no government could have predicted,” said Shapps, a former transportation secretary who now serves as the U.K.’s defense minister.

    “It would be irresponsible to simply spend money, carry on as if nothing had changed,” he told the BBC.

    The projected cost of the line, once billed as Europe’s largest infrastructure project, was estimated at 33 billion pounds in 2011 and has soared to more than 100 billion pounds ($122 billion) by some estimates.

    HS2 is the U.K.’s second high-speed rail line, after the HS1 route that links London and the Channel Tunnel connecting England to France. With trains traveling at a top speed of around 250 m.p.h. (400 kph), the new railway was intended to slash journey times and increase capacity between London, the central England city of Birmingham and the northern cities of Manchester and Leeds.

    Though it drew opposition from environmentalists and lawmakers representing districts along the route, the project was touted as a way to strengthen the north’s creaky, overcrowded and unreliable train network. The government hailed it as a key plank in its plan to “level up” prosperity across the country.

    The north of England, which used to be Britain’s economic engine, saw industries such as coal, cotton and shipbuilding disappear in the last decades of the 20th century, as London and the south grew richer in an economy dominated by finance and services.

    The government canceled the Birmingham-to-Leeds leg of HS2 in 2021 but kept the plan to lay tracks on the 160 miles (260 km) between London and Manchester.

    Former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a longtime champion of the project, said cutting it back even further “makes no sense at all.”

    “It is no wonder that Chinese universities teach the constant cancellation of U..K infrastructure as an example of what is wrong with democracy,” Johnson said.

    Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said people in northern England were “always treated as second-class citizens when it comes to transport.”

    “If they leave a situation where the southern half of the country is connected by modern high-speed lines, and the north of England is left with Victorian infrastructure, that is a recipe for the north-south divide to become a north-south chasm over the rest of this century,” Burnham, a member of the opposition Labour Party, told British TV channel Sky News.

    The government has also delayed work on bringing the line all the way to Euston station in central London. When it opens, some time between 2029 and 2033, trains will start and finish at Old Oak Common station in the city’s western suburbs.

    London Mayor Sadiq Khan said that would create “a ridiculous situation where a ‘high speed’ journey between Birmingham and central London could take as long as the existing route, if not longer.”

    “The government’s approach to HS2 risks squandering the huge economic opportunity that it presents and turning it instead into a colossal waste of public money,” Khan said in a letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

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  • High-speed rail was touted as a game-changer in Britain. Costs are making the government think twice

    High-speed rail was touted as a game-changer in Britain. Costs are making the government think twice

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    LONDON — The British government confirmed Sunday it may scrap a big chunk of an overdue and over-budget high-speed rail line once touted as a way to attract jobs and investment to northern England.

    British media reported that an announcement is expected this week that the line will end in Birmingham – 100 miles (160 kilometers) from London — rather than further north in Manchester.

    The Conservative government insists no final decision has been made about the embattled High Speed 2 project.

    But Cabinet minister Grant Shapps said it was “proper and responsible” to reconsider a project whose costs have ballooned because of high inflation driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

    “We’ve seen very, very high global inflation in a way that no government could have predicted,” said Shapps, a former transportation secretary who now serves as the U.K.’s defense minister.

    “It would be irresponsible to simply spend money, carry on as if nothing had changed,” he told the BBC.

    The projected cost of the line, once billed as Europe’s largest infrastructure project, was estimated at 33 billion pounds in 2011 and has soared to more than 100 billion pounds ($122 billion) by some estimates.

    HS2 is the U.K.’s second high-speed rail line, after the HS1 route that links London and the Channel Tunnel connecting England to France. With trains traveling at a top speed of around 250 m.p.h. (400 kph), the new railway was intended to slash journey times and increase capacity between London, the central England city of Birmingham and the northern cities of Manchester and Leeds.

    Though it drew opposition from environmentalists and lawmakers representing districts along the route, the project was touted as a way to strengthen the north’s creaky, overcrowded and unreliable train network. The government hailed it as a key plank in its plan to “level up” prosperity across the country.

    The north of England, which used to be Britain’s economic engine, saw industries such as coal, cotton and shipbuilding disappear in the last decades of the 20th century, as London and the south grew richer in an economy dominated by finance and services.

    The government canceled the Birmingham-to-Leeds leg of HS2 in 2021 but kept the plan to lay tracks on the 160 miles (260 km) between London and Manchester.

    Former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a longtime champion of the project, said cutting it back even further “makes no sense at all.”

    “It is no wonder that Chinese universities teach the constant cancellation of U..K infrastructure as an example of what is wrong with democracy,” Johnson said.

    Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said people in northern England were “always treated as second-class citizens when it comes to transport.”

    “If they leave a situation where the southern half of the country is connected by modern high-speed lines, and the north of England is left with Victorian infrastructure, that is a recipe for the north-south divide to become a north-south chasm over the rest of this century,” Burnham, a member of the opposition Labour Party, told British TV channel Sky News.

    The government has also delayed work on bringing the line all the way to Euston station in central London. When it opens, some time between 2029 and 2033, trains will start and finish at Old Oak Common station in the city’s western suburbs.

    London Mayor Sadiq Khan said that would create “a ridiculous situation where a ‘high speed’ journey between Birmingham and central London could take as long as the existing route, if not longer.”

    “The government’s approach to HS2 risks squandering the huge economic opportunity that it presents and turning it instead into a colossal waste of public money,” Khan said in a letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

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  • With House Republicans in turmoil, colleagues implore GOP holdouts not to shut down government

    With House Republicans in turmoil, colleagues implore GOP holdouts not to shut down government

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    WASHINGTON — Working furiously to take control of a House in disarray, allies of Speaker Kevin McCarthy implored their Republican colleagues Saturday to drop their hardline tactics and work together to approve a conservative spending plan to prevent a federal shutdown.

    In public overtures and private calls, Republican lieutenants of the embattled speaker pleaded with a handful of right-flank holdouts to resist further disruptions that have ground the House to a halt and back McCarthy’s latest plan to keep government open before next weekend’s Sept. 30 deadline for a shutdown.

    Republican Rep. Garrett Graves of Louisiana said the holdouts are “absolutely hallucinating” if they think they can wrap up work without the need for a temporary measure that many of them have shunned before time runs out.

    “An important part of this strategy is going to be ensuring that we do everything we can to avoid a government shutdown,” Graves said after a Saturday afternoon conference call with lawmakers.

    But in a sign of the deep divisions still ahead, one of the conservative holdouts, Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., walked past the McCarthy allies’ news conference at the Capitol, telling reporters he remained firm in his position.

    Asked if he was worried about a potential shutdown, Rosendale said: “Life is going to go on.”

    President Joe Biden on Saturday chided the “small group of extreme Republicans” who were threatening a shutdown in which “everyone in America could be forced to pay the price.”

    “If the government shuts down, that means members of the U.S. military are going to have to continue to work and not get paid,” he told a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner. “A government shutdown could impact everything from food safety to cancer research to Head Start programs for children. Funding the government is one of the most basic responsibilities of Congress. It’s time for Republicans to start doing the job America elected them to do.”

    Congress had largely emptied out for the weekend as the House ground to a standstill, and the White House instructed federal agencies to begin preparing for a possible shutdown. The House Rules Committee held a rare Saturday session to begin setting up the process for next week’s voting.

    Time is running out for Congress to act, but McCarthy is pushing ahead with plan urged on by his right flank to start voting on some of the dozen bills needed to fund the various government departments.

    Under the current strategy, the House would start voting as soon as Tuesday to advance some of the dozen bills needed to fund the government. Then, with time running short, the House would turn toward a stopgap measure to keep government open for about a month while work continues.

    “Well, people have been holding back, not wanting to do anything — now is not the time,” McCarthy said before an afternoon call with his Republican colleagues.

    McCarthy said his message to the holdouts was: “You’ve got to stop that.”

    At issue is the House conservatives’ drive to undo the deal McCarthy reached with Biden earlier this year setting government funding levels. They are insisting on the lower spending levels McCarthy promised the Republican hardliners in January during his own race to become House speaker. But that would require severe budget cuts to government services and programs even other Republicans don’t want to make.

    Even if McCarthy can secure Republican support to move forward next week on the first four bills for the Defense Department, Homeland Security, Agriculture and State and Foreign Operations — and it’s not at all certain he has the votes to do it — it’s a laborious task.

    Usually it takes weeks, if not months, to process the big bills and hundreds of amendments. And once those House bills are approved, often in round-the-clock voting, they still would go for negotiations with the Senate, which has its own legislation.

    One big issue for debate will be amendments to strip funding for the war in Ukraine being pushed by allies of Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 race for the White House.

    As the floor debate potentially grinds on next week, McCarthy and his allies want the holdouts to be prepared to consider a stopgap measure, called a continuing resolution, or CR, to keep the government funded while talks continue.

    His plan is for the CR to be at lower levels than the government currently spends, and it would include provisions important to Republicans, including to beef up border security and establish a new debt commission.

    But many of the holdouts notably Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a top Trump ally, say they will never vote for any CR — all but ensuring a shutdown, as the former president urges them on.

    Exasperated McCarthy’s allies used the megaphone Saturday to broadcast their case to their colleagues, and to Americans watching the standoff in Congress.

    “Folks can go out there and create these imaginary solutions,” Graves said. “Anyone who says that we’re going to finish all 12 appropriations bills between now and Saturday is absolutely hallucinating.”

    The other option is for McCarthy to work with Democrats to pass a continuing resolution with their votes, and the Senate is preparing such a bipartisan measure that could be sent to the House in a matter of days.

    But if McCarthy joins with Democrats, he will almost certainly face a vote from Gaetz and others for his ouster.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.

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  • White House preparing for government shutdown as House Republicans lack a viable endgame for funding

    White House preparing for government shutdown as House Republicans lack a viable endgame for funding

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    WASHINGTON — The White House is preparing Friday to direct federal agencies to get ready for a shutdown after House Republicans left town for the weekend with no viable plan to keep the government funded and avert politically and economically costly disruption of federal services.

    A federal shutdown after Sept. 30 seems all but certain unless Speaker Kevin McCarthy can persuade his rebellious hard-right flank of Republicans to allow Congress to approve a temporary funding measure to prevent closures as talks continue. Instead, he’s launched a much more ambitious plan to try to start passing multiple funding bills once the House returns Tuesday, with just five days to resolve the standoff.

    “We got members working, and hopefully we’ll be able to move forward on Tuesday to pass these bills,” McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters at the Capitol.

    McCarthy signaled his preference for avoiding a closure, but a hard-right flank of his House majority has effectively seized control. “I still believe if you shut down you’re in a weaker position,” he said.

    The standoff with House Republicans over government funding puts at risk a range of activities — including pay for the military and law enforcement personnel, food safety and food aid programs, air travel and passport processing — and could wreck havoc with the U.S. economy.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday that if federal workers go unpaid it would be Republicans’ fault. “Our message is: This doesn’t have to happen,” she said. “They can do their job and keep these vital programs continuing, keeping the government open.”

    With the Oct. 1 start of a new fiscal year and no funding in place, the Biden administration’s Office of Management and Budget is preparing to advise federal agencies to review and update their shutdown plans, according to an OMB official. The start of this process suggests that federal employees could be informed next week if they’re to be furloughed.

    President Joe Biden has been quick to blame the likely shutdown on House Republicans, who are intent on spending cuts beyond those laid out in a June deal that also suspended the legal cap on the government borrowing’s authority until early 2025.

    “They’re back at it again, breaking their commitment, threatening more cuts and threatening to shut down government again,” Biden during a recent speech in suburban Maryland.

    McCarthy faces immense pressure for severe spending cuts from a handful of hard-right conservatives in his caucus, essentially halting his ability to lead the chamber. Many on the right flank are aligned with Donald Trump — the Republican front-runner to challenge Biden in the 2024 election. They opposed the budget deal the speaker reached with Biden earlier this year and are trying to dismantle it.

    Trump has urged the House Republicans on, pushing them to hold the line against federal spending.

    Led by Trump ally Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., the right flank has all but commandeered control of the House debate in a public rebuke to the speaker.

    Late Thursday, the hard-right faction pushed McCarthy to consider their idea to shelve plans for a stopgap funding measure, called a continuing resolution, or CR, and instead start bringing up the 12 individual bills needed to fund the government.

    The House GOP leadership then announced just that — it would begin processing a package of four bills to fund Defense, Homeland Security, State and Foreign Operations and Agricultural departments, setting up voting for Tuesday when lawmakers return. Work on some bills had been held up by the same conservatives demanding passage now.

    “Any progress we are making is in spite of, not due to McCarthy,” Gaetz posted on social media, deriding the speaker for having sent lawmakers home for the weekend. “Pathetic.”

    Gaetz and his allies say they want to see the House engage in the hard work of legislating — even if it pushes the country into a shutdown — as they pursue sizable reductions and cuts.

    The House Rules Committee was holding a Friday afternoon session to begin preparing those bills, which historically require weeks of floor debate, with hundreds of amendments, but now are slated to be rushed to the floor for next week’s votes. The panel was expected to wrap up its work Saturday.

    It’s a capstone to a difficult week for McCarthy who tried, unsuccessfully, to advance a typically popular defense spending bill that was twice defeated in embarrassing floor votes. The speaker seemed to blame the defeat of the bill on fellow lawmakers “who just want to burn the whole place down.”

    McCarthy’s top allies, including Rep. Garrett Graves, R-La., insisted Friday they were still working toward both ends — passing annual spending bills and pushing for the most conservative stopgap CR with border security provisions — in time to prevent a shutdown.

    Shutdowns happen when Congress and the president fail to complete a set of 12 spending bills, or fail to approve a temporary measure to keep the government operating. As a result, federal agencies are required to stop all actions deemed non-essential. Since 1976, there have been 22 funding gaps, with 10 of them leading to workers being furloughed.

    The last and longest shutdown on record was for 35 days during Trump’s administration, between 2018 and 2019, as he insisted on funding to build a wall along the U.S. southern border that Democrats and some Republicans refused.

    Because some agencies already had approved funding, it was a partial closure. The Congressional Budget Office estimated it came at a cost of $3 billion to the U.S. economy. While $3 billion is a lot of money, it was equal to just 0.02% of U.S. economic activity in 2019.

    There could be costs to parts of the economy and difficulties for individuals.

    Military and law enforcement officials would go unpaid during the shutdown. The disaster relief fund of the Federal Emergency Management Agency could be depleted, hurting the victims of wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes and flooding.

    Clinical trials on new prescription drugs could be delayed. Ten thousand children could lose access to care through Head Start, while environmental and food safety inspections would get backlogged.

    Food aid for Americans through the Women, Infants and Children program could be cut off for nearly 7 million pregnant women, mothers, infants and children.

    Brian Gardner, chief Washington strategist at the investment bank Stifel, said that air traffic controllers largely continued to work without pay during the previous shutdown. He noted that visa and passport applications would not be processed if the government is closed.

    The U.S. Travel Industry Association estimates that the travel sector could lose $140 million daily in a shutdown.

    But in a sign of how little damage that 35-day shutdown did to the overall economy, the S&P 500 stock index climbed 11.6% during the last government closure.

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  • McCarthy gives in to right flank on spending cuts, but they still deliver a defeat as shutdown looms

    McCarthy gives in to right flank on spending cuts, but they still deliver a defeat as shutdown looms

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    WASHINGTON — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s latest plan to prevent a looming federal shutdown by appeasing his hard-right flank quickly collapsed Thursday, a crushing defeat that makes a disruption in government services almost certain.

    A government closure is increasingly likely as time runs out for Congress to act. McCarthy’s bid to move ahead with a traditionally popular defense funding bill as a first step toward keeping the government running was shattered by a core group of Republican colleagues when they refused to vote with the increasingly endangered speaker, whose job is on the line.

    A test vote to advance the bill failed, 212-216, as a handful of Republicans joined with Democrats to stop it. It was the third time that McCarthy, R-Calif., has been stymied on the defense bill, an unheard of loss for a speaker. Once again the House came to a sudden standstill.

    “This is a whole new concept of individuals who just want to burn the whole place down,” McCarthy said after the vote, acknowledging he was frustrated. “It doesn’t work.”

    The open revolt was further evidence that McCarthy’s strategy of repeatedly giving in to the conservatives is seemingly only emboldening them. A handful of GOP lawmakers, urged on by Donald Trump, the party’s early front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination, has run roughshod over their own House majority.

    Trump urged the conservatives to hold the line against the higher funding levels McCarthy had agreed to with President Joe Biden earlier this year and to end the federal criminal indictments against him.

    “This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots,” Trump wrote on social media. “They failed on the debt limit, but they must not fail now. Use the power of the purse and defend the Country!”

    A federal shutdown looms Sept. 30, the end of the current budget year, if Congress cannot pass the bills needed to fund the government or approve a short-term measure to keep Washington running while negotiations continue.

    “We need the extreme MAGA Republicans to get their act together,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, referring to Trump’s campaign slogan.

    “End the civil war,” Jeffries urged the Republicans. “Get your act together.”

    The White House and Democrats, along with some Republicans, warn that a shutdown would be devastating for people who rely on their government for everyday services and would undermine America’s standing in the world.

    Moving forward with the defense bill was supposed to be a way for McCarthy to build goodwill among the GOP House majority as he tries to pass a more temporary bill just to keep the government open. That stopgap measure would fund government for another month, but was in serious doubt. It, too, had catered to other hard-right priorities to slash spending by 8% from many services, and bolster security at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    Many on the right flank want to see progress on the 12 individual appropriations bills that would fund the various federal departments at the lower levels these lawmakers are demanding before they give their votes for any short-term measure. Many opposed the deal McCarthy struck with Biden this year over the spending levels and are trying to dismantle it now.

    Then the test vote on the defense bill shattered McCarthy’s strategy.

    He commands a narrow majority in the House, and Republicans appeared on track, in a tight roll call, to advancing the measure Thursday. Then the Democrats who had not yet voted began rushing into the chamber.

    New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and fellow Democrats yelled out to hold open the vote. She was a “no.” A few others came in behind her and tipped the tally toward defeat.

    The Democrats oppose the military bill on many fronts, including the Republican provisions that would gut diversity programs at the Pentagon.

    As passage appeared doomed, attention turned to the five Republican holdouts to switch their votes.

    GOP leaders spent more than an hour on the floor trying to recruit one holdout, Rep. Dan Bishop. R-N.C., to vote “yes.”

    Bishop told reporters afterward that he would have been willing to flip his vote in support but that he felt that previous evening’s long meeting, when McCarthy convened lawmakers for two hours in the Capitol basement, did not provide him the assurances he needed.

    “Every time there’s the slightest relief of the pressure, the movement goes away from completing the work,” Bishop said.

    When asked what it would take to gain his vote, Bishop said, “I think a schedule of appropriations bills over Kevin McCarthy signature would be meaningful to you to me.”

    Others were dug in, including some who had supported advancing the defense bill just two days ago when it failed.

    Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a chief opponent of more aid for Ukraine in the war against Russia, said she voted against the defense bill this time because her party’s leadership refused to separate out the war money. Her stand came as Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was at the Capitol during a high-profile visit to Washington.

    McCarthy had pledged to keep lawmakers in session this weekend for as long as it took to finish their work. But as he runs out of options, the next steps are uncertain.

    Many Republicans were starting to speak up more forcefully against their hard-right colleagues.

    New York Rep. Mike Lawler, who represents a swing district, said he would not “be party to a shutdown.”

    “There needs to be a realization that you’re not going to get everything you want,” he said. “Just throwing a temper tantrum and stomping your feet — frankly, not only is it wrong — it’s just pathetic.”

    ___

    Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri, Kevin Freking and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.

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  • McCarthy privately outlines new GOP plan to avert shutdown, setting up clash with Senate | CNN Politics

    McCarthy privately outlines new GOP plan to avert shutdown, setting up clash with Senate | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy privately outlined to members a new GOP plan to keep the government open on Wednesday after a marathon two-and-a-half-hour GOP conference meeting.

    The California Republican later told reporters that Republican negotiators made “tremendous progress as an entire conference,” following days of GOP infighting and less than two weeks before a government funding deadline.

    “We are very close,” McCarthy said Wednesday evening when asked specifically what progress had been made on the GOP short-term bill. “I feel like just got a little more movement to go there,” he added of the new GOP plan. When asked specifically about the topline numbers, he wouldn’t get into details but said: “We’re in a good place.”

    The plan, as outlined by the speaker, would keep the government open for 30 days at $1.471 trillion spending levels, a commission to address the debt and a border security package. Separately, they also agreed to move year-long funding bills at a $1.526 trillion level. That level is below the bipartisan agreement that the speaker reached with the White House to raise the national debt limit.

    The levels are also far lower than what senators from both parties and the White House are willing to accept, meaning it’s unclear how such a deal would avert a government shutdown. With just 10 days left to fund the government, the new plan sets up a standoff with the Senate over how to keep the government open.

    As part of the deal, Republicans now believe they have the votes to move forward on the yearlong spending bill that five conservative hardliners scuttled just Tuesday.

    GOP Rep. Mike Garcia of California said after Wednesday evening’s conference meeting there is now “a little more clarity” on the path forward.

    “We have a little more clarity as to a potential plan moving forward,” Garcia said, adding, “We are still negotiating that final number and trying to figure out exactly what we can do.”

    Some of the people that were previously opposed now signaled they are supportive. Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Ken Buck of Colorado indicated they will flip to a yes on the rule and will vote to advance the Department of Defense bill Thursday after the speaker came down to the spending levels that Norman had been demanding.

    “Sounds like we’ve got the votes for the rule,” Garcia said, pointing to Buck and Norman as having committed to changing to a “Yes.”

    With McCarthy’s extremely thin margin in the chamber – and Democrats so far united against the GOP proposal – Republican leadership has been negotiating for days to try to win over enough GOP support to pass their legislation.

    When asked about struggling to make progress earlier Wednesday, McCarthy repeated his favorite line, insisting he will never back down from a challenge no matter how messy.

    “I wouldn’t quit the first time I went for the vote for speaker,” McCarthy said, a reference to how he was voted speaker only after 15 rounds and days of voting in January. “The one thing if you haven’t learned anything about me yet, I will never quit.”

    However, an additional potential complicating factor emerged Wednesday night with former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, coming out in opposition to a short-term funding bill as he called on lawmakers to defund the DOJ and the investigations into him.

    McCarthy and his GOP leadership team have been trying to sell the House Republican Conference on unifying behind a plan to fund the government, brokered between the House Freedom Caucus and the more moderate Main Street Caucus over the weekend. But that proposed legislation encountered immediate opposition from more than a dozen far-right Republican lawmakers who wanted deeper spending cuts attached.

    Amid that impasse with conservatives, moderates in the bipartisan House Problem Solver’s Caucus are close to finalizing their own framework on a short-term spending bill that would fund the government for several months at current levels and include Ukraine aid and disaster assistance, according to two sources. Even with Democratic support, that plan would still likely face major challenges – not the least of which is how it would get to the floor before the government runs out of money.

    There are already signs that this alternative plan could face its own strong headwinds – not just with Republicans but with Democrats. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a progressive Democrat from Washington state, told CNN on “Inside Politics” that she wants a “clean” continuing resolution of funds, a sign that progressives may not back some of the border security provisions that the Problem Solvers Caucus members are eyeing.

    House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries met with the House Problem Solvers Caucus earlier Wednesday, and said afterward that they need a bipartisan agreement in line with what was already negotiated in the debt ceiling package.

    “We need to find a bipartisan agreement consistent with what was previously reached,” he said.

    House GOP leadership announced Wednesday night that the House will be in and voting on Friday and Saturday, making official what was expected as the majority struggled to reach an agreement all week.

    The House is expected to pass a rule for the defense appropriations bill Thursday. Assuming the rule passes, the House will then start consideration of the defense bill with final passage expected Friday.

    The thinking would then be to pass the new GOP stopgap plan on Saturday, which is expected to be a full day.

    Members were advised on Tuesday to keep their schedules flexible as weekend votes were possible. Members filtering in and out of Whip Emmer’s office the past two days are insistent that they are making progress, but Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota told CNN earlier Wednesday that while they are getting closer, they are not close yet.

    Rep. Garrett Graves from Louisiana, who has been in the room for negotiations, had echoed that schedule change and projected Friday and Saturday work.

    “I think we’re going to be here this weekend,” he said.

    When pressed on what exactly they’d be up to and if they’d be able to vote by Saturday, Graves said, “Well, we won’t be having Mardi Gras parties,” indicating they’d be voting.

    Rep. Steve Womack, a Republican from Arkansas who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, lambasted the hardliners, calling it a “breach of duty.”

    “We’ve got a handful of people that are holding the rest of the conference, the majority of our conference kind of held hostage right now and in turn, holding up America,” he told CNN.

    Womack also said this will likely extend into the weekend and that “either it’s gonna be good or it’s gonna be bad.”

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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  • Speaker McCarthy faces an almost impossible task trying to unite House GOP and fund the government

    Speaker McCarthy faces an almost impossible task trying to unite House GOP and fund the government

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    WASHINGTON — Facing fresh challenges to his leadership, Speaker Kevin McCarthy is trying to accomplish what at times seems impossible — working furiously to convince House Republicans to come together and pass a conservative bill to keep the federal government open.

    It’s a nearly futile exercise that could help McCarthy keep his job, but has little chance of actually preventing a federal shutdown. Whatever House Republicans come up with is nearly certain to be rejected by the Senate, where Democrats and most Republicans want to fund the government.

    In one dramatic sign of defeat Tuesday, House Republicans were even voting against their own defense bill. During a rowdy afternoon vote, the usually popular bill was turned back from consideration, 212-214, after five hard-right conservatives helped sink it. They want to see an overall plan from McCarthy.

    McCarthy simply walked off the House floor. “Look, the one thing you’re going to learn about me: I like a challenge — I don’t like this big a challenge — but we’re just gonna keep doing it until we can make it,” McCarthy told reporters.

    With time dwindling, Congress faces a Sept. 30 deadline to pass the broader government funding legislation and get a bill to President Joe Biden’s desk to become law. Otherwise, the U.S. faces massive federal government closures and disruptions. Plans for another vote Tuesday to advance the overall spending bill were shelved.

    “The ball’s in Kevin’s court,” said Republican Rep. Ralph Norman of the Freedom Caucus.

    The latest House government funding proposal, a compromise between members of the hard-right Freedom Caucus and the more pragmatic Main Street conservatives, was almost dead on arrival, left sputtering even after McCarthy loaded it up with spending cuts and Republican priorities in a border security package.

    Behind closed doors Tuesday, the speaker was trying to stress the political repercussions of a government shutdown to Republicans, warning them that no party wins with a closure.

    Unlike last week when an angry and frustrated McCarthy unleashed foul language on his colleagues, he tried a different tack when addressing his members privately in the Capitol basement.

    Appearing cool, calm and collected, McCarthy cast the funding plan as just a proposal and left time for rank-and-file members to debate, according to Republicans familiar with the meeting.

    Still, one Republican after another rose to tell McCarthy that the current plan would not have their votes. With a slim majority, he needs almost every Republican on board.

    Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., one of the negotiators for the Main Street group, urged her colleagues later to not let the “perfect be the enemy of the good.”

    The showdown over the usually popular defense bill shows the difficulty ahead — it was the second time McCarthy had tried to advance the measure after he abruptly withdrew it from consideration last week.

    The attempt to soothe tensions among Republicans comes as tempers are flaring and as big personalities try to seize the upper hand — some trying to lead and others hoping to disrupt any plans for compromise.

    Florida’s two leading conservatives, Matt Gaetz and newcomer Byron Donalds, are sniping in the halls and across social media, as Gaetz criticizes the deal Donalds and others struck as insufficiently conservative.

    And freshmen Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., pointedly attacked McCarthy as a “weak speaker.”

    One seasoned lawmaker Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., warned the infighting could derail the House GOP, much the way it did for past speakers like John Boehner and Paul Ryan. Both retired earlier than expected amid constant threats of ousters.

    Womack said he fears there is a “larger fight” brewing “that is more of a personality nature because of the conflict between certain members and the speaker.”

    The monthlong funding package that McCarthy is pushing would impose steep spending cuts of more than 8% on many government services, while sparing defense and veterans accounts. It would last for 31 days in hopes of giving House Republicans time to approve the more traditional government funding bills.

    The White House issued a memo detailing cuts from the Republican plan, saying it would mean fewer border patrol agents, school teachers and aides, Meals on Wheels for seniors and Head Start slots for children, among other cutbacks.

    “Extreme House Republicans are playing partisan games with peoples’ lives and marching our country toward a government shutdown,” the White House said.

    Across the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned of the steep cuts Republicans are planning with their “cruel” and “reckless” spending plan.

    At its core, House Republicans are trying to undo the deal McCarthy reached with Biden earlier this year to set federal funding levels as part of the debt ceiling fight. Conservatives rejected that measure then, even though it was approved and signed into law, and they are trying to dismantle it now.

    But House Republicans are late to the effort, with time running short to act. Whatever bills they pass are certain to run aground in the Senate, where bipartisan groups of senators have already started approving their own funding bills, some at levels higher than the Biden-McCarthy agreement.

    The roughly dozen Republicans who have voiced displeasure at McCarthy’s proposal see the current impasse as a make-or-break moment to hold the speaker to commitments to drastically cut topline government spending.

    “If my party is not going to stand up, what is the right thing to do?” said Spartz. “No matter how hard, I don’t think anyone else will.”

    When Spartz was asked whether she would support an effort to oust McCarthy, she said she was “open to everything.”

    But Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who helped draft the proposal, all but dared his fellow Freedom Caucus members and other “so-called conservative colleagues” to reject it — particularly its “dream bill” provisions for dealing with the U.S. border with Mexico.

    “If my conservative colleagues want to vote against that, go explain that,” Roy said.

    The holdouts want steeper cuts that would adhere to the $1.47 trillion for annual discretionary funding they had initially advanced earlier this year to raise the nation’s debt limit.

    Another seasoned lawmaker, Republican Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, warned of pain ahead for Americans if the government shuts down.

    “It would be disastrous,” he said. “I’ve never seen a time when a shutdown is good policy or good politics.”

    Simpson suggested it was time for McCarthy to reach out to Democrats to strike a bipartisan deal.

    But that would almost certainly lead McCarthy’s right-flank to try to hold a vote to oust him from the speaker’s job.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Josh Boak contributed to this report.

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  • The Senate’s bipartisan approach to government funding is putting pressure on a divided House

    The Senate’s bipartisan approach to government funding is putting pressure on a divided House

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    WASHINGTON — On one side of the Capitol, two senators have steered the debate over government funding mostly clear of partisan fights, creating a path for bills to pass with bipartisan momentum.

    Steps away, on the House side of the building, things couldn’t be more different.

    House Republicans, trying to win support from the far-right wing of the party, have loaded up their government funding packages with spending cuts and conservative policy priorities. Democrats have responded with ire, branding their GOP counterparts as extreme and bigoted, and are withdrawing support for the legislation.

    The contrary approaches are not unusual for such fights in Congress. But the differences are especially stark this time, creating a gulf between the chambers that could prove difficult to bridge. The dynamic threatens to plunge the United States into yet another damaging government shutdown, potentially as soon as the end of September when last year’s funding expires.

    Leaders in both chambers are trying to project strength as they enter negotiations that will determine the fate of billions of dollars in government programs, military aid for Ukraine and emergency disaster recovery funds.

    The Senate strategy is being led by the first female duo to hold the top leadership spots on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Susan Collins, R-Maine.

    The two have worked for months to pull off a feat not seen in Congress in five years, crafting 12 separate funding bills through the so-called regular order process, which involves crafting legislation in open committee hearings. The goal is to avoid an outcome that rank-and-file lawmakers in both parties loathe: being forced to fund the government at year’s end with a sprawling omnibus package, nearly sight unseen, after it emerges from closed-door negotiations.

    “I heard from many members at the end of last year, Republicans and Democrats, that they don’t want this dysfunction,” Murray told The Associated Press. “They want the appropriations bill not to be some big conglomerate at the end of the year that nobody knows what’s in it.”

    As Murray took the helm of the committee earlier this year, she and Collins began to build on their decades-old working relationship. Murray also met with the top Democrats and Republicans on each subcommittee and urged them to shield funding legislation from “poison pill” policy riders that would drive away the members of one party or the other.

    Their effort was at first met with skepticism, Murray said. But as the Senate grinds toward votes on their funding bills, they have won plaudits from leadership in both parties.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the appropriations work “a shining example of how things should work in Washington.” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has been supportive as well, saying Murray and Collins “have taken us in the right direction.”

    Collins said she has urged her Republican colleagues, who are in the minority, to “understand that if they really believe in regular order, we need to proceed with these bills and start the amendment process and conclude the bills and send them on their way to the House.”

    So far, Senate appropriations bills have made it out of the committee on large bipartisan votes, and the Senate this past week took a step toward a final vote on the first package of three spending bills with a 91-7 vote.

    Thanks to the filibuster that forces a 60-vote threshold for passage of most legislation, the Senate has no choice but to work on a bipartisan basis when it comes to most major legislation. But the chamber is hardly immune to political brinkmanship. A few GOP senators allied with conservatives in the House are working to slow the Senate’s work on appropriations bills. The delay could give the House more time to advance its own, hard-line approach.

    Still, the Senate’s coordination on the bills only intensifies the pressure on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who abandoned a plan to pass a defense funding bill — one of the 12 appropriations bills, and usually one of the least controversial — after members of the House Freedom Caucus refused to support it advancing to a vote on the House floor.

    “You’re stronger when you have one House and you can advocate for the policies you want and you’ve passed that,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said Wednesday, shortly after he was forced to call off the vote.

    The top lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee, Reps. Kay Granger of Texas, R-Texas, and Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., have had a good working relationship, but their bills are shaped by larger forces in the House. That means all eyes are on McCarthy as he tries to win support from the conservative wing of his own conference.

    To win the speaker’s gavel, McCarthy committed to returning the appropriations process to regular order. He reiterated that approach this week saying, “The American public wins in this — that they actually see the bills.”

    But with a thin majority and a shaky hold on his leadership position, McCarthy has allowed House Republicans to craft packages that cut below the agreement he struck in May with President Joe Biden to suspend the nation’s borrowing limit. They have also loaded the House’s appropriations bills with conservative policy wins, ensuring Democratic opposition.

    McCarthy has also ratcheted up the political divide in the House by directing an impeachment inquiry into Biden — a move that the right-wing of his conference has been demanding for months.

    “House Republicans have made clear that they are determined to shut down the government and try to jam their extreme right-wing ideology down the throats of the American people,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

    Republican appropriators have used their funding bills to engage in charged partisan fights, teeing up cuts to programs that benefit LGBTQ people, funding for the Department of Defense’s policy of facilitating travel for service members to receive abortions and defunding offices and positions that Republicans see as liberal.

    Committee hearings often grew tense over the summer as Democrats accused Republicans of betraying future generations by cutting money for environmental protections and climate programs. Republicans criticized current spending levels as a betrayal of their children and grandchildren because it imperils the future of Social Security and Medicare.

    Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a senior Republican, dismissed the House ruckus as “the chaos of democracy.”

    “We’re actually having a real legislative debate over here, a pretty robust discussion and some pretty hardball politics,” he said.

    But a government shutdown is approaching rapidly, leaving House Republicans little time to form an appropriations plan or pass a short-term measure that would give them more time to negotiate a funding deal.

    McCarthy told a closed-door House GOP meeting on Thursday that he would keep the House in session longer than scheduled if necessary, according to lawmakers in attendance.

    Exiting the meeting, Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said McCarthy’s message was stark: “We will be losers if we get a shutdown.”

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  • Americans are feeling gloomier about the economy | CNN Business

    Americans are feeling gloomier about the economy | CNN Business

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    Washington, DC
    CNN
     — 

    Americans aren’t feeling gloomy about higher gas prices just yet, but they’re still on edge about inflation and the economy’s direction — and concerns are starting to surface about the possibility of a government shutdown.

    Consumer sentiment tracked by the University of Michigan edged down in September from the prior month by 1.8 points, according to a preliminary reading released Friday.

    “Both short-run and long-run expectations for economic conditions improved modestly this month, though on net consumers remain relatively tentative about the trajectory of the economy,” said the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers Director Joanne Hsu in a release. “So far, few consumers mentioned the potential federal government shutdown, but if the shutdown comes to bear, consumer views on the economy will likely slide, as was the case just a few months ago when the debt ceiling neared a breach.”

    Sentiment could start to sour soon, since gas prices are highly visible indicators of inflation. Sentiment fell to its lowest level on record last summer when gas prices topped $5 a gallon and inflation reached a four-decade high. The national average for regular gasoline stood at $3.87 a gallon on Friday, according to AAA, seven cents higher than a week ago and 17 cents higher than the same day last year.

    Consumers’ expectation of inflation rates in the year ahead fell to a 3.1% rate in September, down from 3.5% in the prior month.

    This story is developing and will be updated.

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  • Virginia lawmakers pass long-overdue budget bill with tax rebates, extra aid for schools

    Virginia lawmakers pass long-overdue budget bill with tax rebates, extra aid for schools

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    RICHMOND, Va. — The politically divided Virginia General Assembly approved long-overdue budget legislation Wednesday, voting in an unusually fast-paced special session to both reduce taxes and boost spending on public education and mental health as part of the package.

    Lawmakers spent just a few hours in the Capitol considering the compromise plan before overwhelmingly adopting it and sending it to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin. He can sign it as is, or seek amendments.

    “I’m really pleased with the budget we have before us today. The negotiations have been very intense and very extended. But the outcome is both fair and balanced towards the priorities of both the House and the Senate,” said Democratic Sen. Janet Howell of Fairfax County, who co-chairs the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee.

    Howell was among a small group of negotiators holding closed-door budget talks since the Legislature’s regular session ended without agreement on adjustments to the two-year state spending plan, which runs through mid-2024. The group announced the compromise two weeks ago but only rolled out the full bill last weekend.

    The proposal includes about $1 billion in tax reductions, mostly through one-time tax rebates of $200 for individuals and $400 for joint filers. It also would increase the standard deduction, remove the age requirement for a military retiree tax benefit and reinstate a popular back-to-school sales tax holiday lawmakers forgot to renew. While the holiday typically takes place in August, it would instead be held this year in late October under the plan.

    Tax policy changes were a key part of what turned into a six-month stalemate, as Youngkin and the GOP-controlled House of Delegates had argued for an additional $1 billion permanent cuts, including a reduction in the corporate tax rate. Democrats who control the state Senate argued that more reductions would be premature after negotiating $4 billion in tax relief last year. The rebates, which weren’t initially included in either chamber’s budget bill, were a compromise.

    The legislation would boost K-12 education spending by about $650 million and fund behavioral health initiatives sought by Youngkin, including new crisis receiving centers and crisis stabilization units. It includes funding for an extra 2% raise for state workers starting in December, and money for the state’s share of a 2% raise for state-supported local employees, including teachers. The combination of tax cuts and increased spending is possible because the state had accumulated a multibillion surplus.

    Among other notable provisions are: $200 million in new resources for economic development-related site acquisitions; $62.5 million in additional funding for college financial aid; and $12.3 million for the Virginia Employment Commission to help address the unemployment appeals backlog and support call centers.

    It would allocate $250,000 to establish a Department of Corrections ombudsman within the state’s watchdog agency —- something long sought by reform advocates.

    The bill directs the State Corporation Commission to continue a widely supported reinsurance program that reduced premiums this year. The commission recently warned that because lawmakers hadn’t acted to effectively renew the program, it was headed for suspension in 2024.

    The legislation does not address a proposed casino in Richmond, meaning the city can proceed with a planned voter referendum this fall.

    Youngkin hasn’t yet said if he will seek changes to the budget as passed, which would mean lawmakers would have to return to Richmond to consider his proposed amendments. But he issued a statement heralding the bill’s passage.

    “While the process took longer than needed, more than $1 billion in tax relief is on the way to Virginia veterans, working families and businesses. Additionally, this collaborative effort ensured the funding of our shared priorities: investing in students and teachers, supporting our law enforcement community and transforming the way behavioral health care is delivered in the Commonwealth,” Youngkin said.

    Because Virginia operates on a two-year budget cycle, with the full plan adopted in even years and tweaked in odd years, this year’s delay in approving the legislation has not impacted state government services or payroll. But it has led to consternation from school districts, local governments and other interests impacted by the state’s taxation and spending policies.

    Wednesday’s proceedings advanced with little substantive debate after lawmakers agreed to a procedural resolution that essentially said floor amendments would not be considered. Lawmakers also waived the typical requirement that legislation be heard several times before it’s taken up for a final vote.

    Every Assembly seat is up for election this fall, and members of both parties found things to tout in the plan.

    “This budget agreement prioritizes Virginia families, especially our veterans and our children, over the tax cuts that the Republicans wanted to give to big corporations,” House Democratic Leader Don Scott said.

    House Appropriations Chairman Barry Knight said it was a “bipartisan, bicameral compromise” and retiring Republican Sen. Steve Newman called it “as fiscally responsible a bill as I’ve ever seen,” given its focus on one-time versus recurring spending.

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  • Congress returns to try to stave off a government shutdown while GOP weighs impeachment inquiry

    Congress returns to try to stave off a government shutdown while GOP weighs impeachment inquiry

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    WASHINGTON — After months of struggling to find agreement on just about anything in a divided Congress, lawmakers are returning to Capitol Hill to try to avert a government shutdown, even as House Republicans consider whether to press forward with an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

    A short-term funding measure to keep government offices fully functioning will dominate the September agenda, along with emergency funding for Ukraine, federal disaster funds and the Republican-driven probe into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings.

    Time is running short for Congress to act. The House is scheduled to meet for just 11 days before the government’s fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, leaving little room to maneuver. And the dealmaking will play out as two top Republicans, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, deal with health issues.

    The president and congressional leaders, including Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, are focused on passage of a months-long funding measure, known as a continuing resolution, to keep government offices running while lawmakers iron out a budget. It’s a step Congress routinely takes to avoid stoppages, but McCarthy faces resistance from within his own Republican ranks, including from some hardline conservatives who openly embrace the idea of a government shutdown.

    “Honestly, it’s a pretty big mess,” McConnell said at an event in Kentucky last week.

    Here are the top issues as lawmakers return from the August break:

    KEEPING THE GOVERNMENT OPEN

    When Biden and McCarthy struck a deal to suspend the nation’s debt ceiling in June, it included provisions for topline spending numbers. But under pressure from the House Freedom Caucus, House Republicans have advanced spending bills that cut below that agreement.

    Republicans have also tried to load their spending packages with conservative policy wins. For example, House Republicans added provisions blocking abortion coverage, transgender care and diversity initiatives to a July defense package, turning what has traditionally been a bipartisan effort into a sharply contested bill.

    But Democrats control the Senate and are certain to reject most of the conservative proposals. Senators are crafting their spending bills on a bipartisan basis with an eye toward avoiding unrelated policy fights.

    Top lawmakers in both chambers are now turning to a stopgap funding package, a typical strategy to give the lawmakers time to iron out a long-term agreement.

    The House Freedom Caucus has already released a list of demands it wants included in the continuing resolution. But they amount to a right-wing wish list that would never fly in the Senate.

    The conservative opposition means McCarthy will almost certainly have to win significant Democratic support to pass a funding bill — but such an approach risks a new round of conflict with the same conservatives who in the past have threatened to oust him from the speakership.

    Democrats are already readying blame for the House GOP.

    “The last thing the American people deserve is for extreme House members to trigger a government shutdown that hurts our economy, undermines our disaster preparedness, and forces our troops to work without guaranteed pay,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates.

    In a letter to his colleagues Friday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote that the focus when the Senate returns Tuesday will be “funding the government and preventing House Republican extremists from forcing a government shutdown.”

    It leaves McCarthy desperate to get the votes to keep government offices running and avoid the political blowback. As he tries to persuade Republicans to go along with a temporary fix, McCarthy has been arguing that a government shutdown would also halt Republican investigations into the Biden administration.

    “If we shut down, all of government shuts it down — investigations and everything else — it hurts the American public,” the speaker said on Fox News last week.

    IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY

    Since they gained the House majority, Republicans have launched a series of investigations into the Biden administration, with an eye towards impeaching the president or his Cabinet officials. They have now zeroed in on the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and his overseas business dealings, including with Ukrainian gas company Burisma.

    The inquiries have not produced evidence that President Biden took official action on behalf of his son or business partners, but McCarthy has called impeachment a “natural step forward” for the investigations.

    An impeachment inquiry by the House would be a first step toward bringing articles of impeachment. It is not yet clear what that may look like, especially because the speaker does not appear to have the GOP votes lined up to support an impeachment inquiry. Moderate Republicans have so far balked at sending the House on a full-fledged impeachment hunt.

    But Donald Trump, running once again to challenge Biden, is prodding them to move ahead quickly.

    “I don’t know how actually how a Republican could not do it,” Trump said in an interview on Real America’s Voice. “I think a Republican would be primaried and lose immediately, no matter what district you’re in.”

    UKRAINE AND DISASTER FUNDING

    The White House has requested more than $40 billion in emergency funding, including $13 billion in military aid for Ukraine, $8 billion in humanitarian support for the nation and $12 billion to replenish U.S. federal disaster funds at home.

    The request for the massive cash infusion comes as Kyiv launches a counteroffensive against the Russian invasion. But support for Ukraine is waning among Republicans, especially as Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism of the war.

    Nearly 70 Republicans voted for an unsuccessful effort to discontinue military aid to Ukraine in July, though strong support for the war effort remains among many members.

    It is also not clear whether the White House’s supplemental request for U.S. disaster funding, which also includes funds to bolster enforcement and curb drug trafficking at the southern U.S. border, will be tied to the Ukraine funding or a continuing budget resolution. The disaster funding enjoys wide support in the House, but could be tripped up if packaged with other funding proposals.

    LEGISLATION ON HOLD

    The Senate is expected to spend most of September focused on funding the government and confirming Biden’s nominees, meaning that major policy legislation will have to wait. But Schumer outlined some priorities for the remaining months of the year in the letter to his colleagues.

    Schumer said the Senate would work on legislation to lower the costs of drugs, address rail safety and provide disaster relief after floods in Vermont, fires in Hawaii and a hurricane in Florida.

    Senators will also continue to examine whether legislation is needed to address artificial intelligence. Schumer has convened what he is calling an “AI insight forum” on Sept. 13 in the Senate with tech industry leaders, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the CEO of X and Tesla, as well as former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.

    HEALTH CONCERNS

    Senate Republicans will return next week to renewed questions about the health of their leader, McConnell.

    McConnell, 81, faces questions about his ability to continue as the top Senate Republican after he has frozen up twice during news conferences in the last two months since falling and suffering a concussion in March. During the event in Kentucky last week, he fell silent for roughly 30 seconds as he answered a question from a reporter.

    Dr. Brian Monahan, the Capitol’s attending physician, said Thursday that McConnell is cleared to work. But the question of whether McConnell — the longest-serving party leader in Senate history — can continue as Republican leader has sparked intense speculation about who will eventually replace him.

    Meanwhile, the health of California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 90, has visibly wavered in recent months after she was hospitalized for shingles earlier this year. She suffered a fall at her San Francisco home in August and visited the hospital for testing.

    And in the House, Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 2 Republican, disclosed last week that he has been diagnosed with a form of blood cancer known as multiple myeloma and is undergoing treatment.

    Scalise, 57, said he will continue to serve and described the cancer as “very treatable.”

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  • West Virginia University crisis looms as GOP leaders focus on economic development, jobs

    West Virginia University crisis looms as GOP leaders focus on economic development, jobs

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    MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — On the same day that dejected students pleaded with the board of West Virginia’s flagship university not to eliminate its entire foreign languages department and dozens of other programs, Gov. Jim Justice said he was feeling hopeful about the future of education in the state.

    “We’ve had tough times — there will be more tough times — but absolutely we are rising from the ashes,” Justice said Aug. 22, while signing a bill allocating $45 million for another state school, Marshall University, to open a new cybersecurity center 200 miles from West Virginia University.

    Lawmakers approved the Marshall project, heralded as the nation’s “new East Coast hub” for cybersecurity, in a hastily called special session last month but rejected calls to send WVU funds to address its budget deficit, currently about $45 million.

    The Legislature’s lack of interest in bailing out the state’s largest university comes as WVU struggles with the financial toll of dwindling enrollment, revenue lost during the COVID-19 pandemic and an increasing debt load for new building projects. Administrators have pushed to take drastic action that raises questions about the responsibilities of states to offer diverse academic offerings — particularly at land-grant institutions in rural areas that traditionally lack access — and could be an early indicator of shifting priorities nationwide.

    With a budget shortfall projected to grow as high as $75 million in five years, West Virginia University is proposing cutting 32 programs — 9% of the majors offered on its Morgantown campus — including its entire department of world languages, literatures and linguistics, along with graduate and doctoral degrees in math, music, English and more. Other U.S. universities and colleges have faced similar decisions, but this is one of the most extreme examples of a flagship university turning to such dramatic cuts — particularly when it comes to foreign languages.

    After an appeals process last week, school officials pivoted to recommending that WVU’s board of governors retain five out of 24 full-time world languages faculty to teach some in-person Chinese and Spanish. They also moved to save the school’s graduate creative writing program, which had been slated for elimination. But the English department would still lose a little over a fourth of its instructors under the current plan, which WVU’s board will vote on Sept. 15.

    WVU has labeled the shift an “academic transformation” amid an “existential crisis” in higher education. Speaking to faculty this year, WVU President Gordon Gee said higher education has “lost the support and trust of the American public.”

    “I want to be very blunt: We have been isolated, we have been arrogant, we have told the American public what they should think,” he said, adding that institutions like WVU have to “turn that around almost immediately, otherwise we have a very bleak future.”

    But critics see a different a set of circumstances, accusing the administration of financial mismanagement, poor strategic planning and lack of transparency in a state with the lowest rate of college graduates and highest rate of population exodus.

    After being named WVU’s president in 2014, Gee promised to increase enrollment to 40,000 students by 2020, which never materialized. Instead, the student population at West Virginia University has dropped 10% since 2015, while on-campus expansion continued.

    WVU has spent millions of dollars on construction projects in recent years, including a $100 million new home for the university’s business school, a $35 million renovation of a 70-year-old classroom building and $41 million for two phases of upgrades to the football team’s building.

    The crisis, which the American Federation of Teachers called “draconian and catastrophic,” has drawn outrage at WVU, where hundreds of students staged a protest against the cuts.

    Freshman math and English major Joey Demes already had several college credits when he was looking at colleges. Demes was in the foster care system until he was 18 and chose WVU based on the strength of its math program and financial support the institution offered that “other colleges would not have.”

    Now, he said he feels like both majors are being attacked.

    “This is where I’ve grown up and lived and it is upsetting for me,” he told the university’s board Aug. 22, adding that he plans to continue his math education after undergrad and become a researcher. “What I’m being told with the grad program for math being cut, is that you guys don’t want me here, that you want me to go to another state and get an education elsewhere.”

    Leaders agree that education is a key tool to attracting young people and improving quality of life in West Virginia, but WVU’s predicament has raised serious questions about what kinds of education add the most “value.”

    For the GOP officeholders, value is in economic development and promoting innovative programs — like cybersecurity — that can’t be found almost anywhere else. Many at WVU, however, say the school’s diverse offerings give students opportunities they might not be able to access — or afford — elsewhere that are just as valuable.

    “We all know what’s going on at WVU, and they will work out their problems,” Republican Senate President Craig Blair said during the signing ceremony at Marshall. “Our No. 1 export has been our youth. That must change.”

    As the flagship, WVU has always received a larger share of higher education funding, state leaders say. The school received $50 million from the state just two months ago for its cancer institute. But some insist money hasn’t always been spent wisely.

    Lawmakers recently approved a higher education funding formula rewarding schools for degree attainment, workforce outcomes and graduate wages.

    Republican Senate Finance Chair Eric Tarr said the way to benefit from the formula is to “provide degrees that lead to jobs.”

    “WVU is now making changes that will permit that to occur,” he wrote in an opinion piece, raising concern about what he called “unbridled spending by liberal ‘educators’” across the country.

    Professor Lisa Di Bartolomeo, who coordinates the university’s Russian studies and Slavic and East European studies programs, said the long-term effect of the program cuts will be profound. Di Bartolomeo said the blow to WVU’s language arts alone is the most extreme “that anybody has seen anywhere in the country.”

    “I hope this is not a sign of things to come, but I do worry that it may be, and that other places will see what WVU is doing and say, ‘Oh, well we can get away with this, too,’” she said.

    Mary Manspeaker, an English Ph.D. student, said she left her home state at 18 because she didn’t see opportunity in West Virginia. She came back to the university where her parents went because her research is focused on Appalachia.

    “To come back and be told that the English department doesn’t matter, that I was right, that there might not be a place for me in West Virginia is heartbreaking,” she said.

    Peter Lake, who directs the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Florida’s Stetson University said that in recent decades, institutions have increasingly taken a more business-focused approach centering on “return on investment.”

    The concern for a flagship like WVU, Lake said, is whether these cuts eliminate a pathway for liberal arts studies for most students, preserving them only for “elite institutions that fairly wealthy or very fortunate people can attend.”

    He said the conflict reflects the fundamental question in higher education right now: How do we assess value?

    “Where is the real wealth and where does it lie?” he said. “And it might be in cash, endowment and buildings, but it could arguably be in other things.”

    ___

    Raby reported from Charleston, West Virginia.

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  • West Virginia University crisis looms as GOP leaders focus on economic development, jobs

    West Virginia University crisis looms as GOP leaders focus on economic development, jobs

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    MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — On the same day that dejected students pleaded with the board of West Virginia’s flagship university not to eliminate its entire foreign languages department and dozens of other programs, Gov. Jim Justice said he was feeling hopeful about the future of education in the state.

    “We’ve had tough times — there will be more tough times — but absolutely we are rising from the ashes,” Justice said Aug. 22, while signing a bill allocating $45 million for another state school, Marshall University, to open a new cybersecurity center 200 miles from West Virginia University.

    Lawmakers approved the Marshall project, heralded as the nation’s “new East Coast hub” for cybersecurity, in a hastily called special session last month but rejected calls to send WVU funds to address its budget deficit, currently about $45 million.

    The Legislature’s lack of interest in bailing out the state’s largest university comes as WVU struggles with the financial toll of dwindling enrollment, revenue lost during the COVID-19 pandemic and an increasing debt load for new building projects. Administrators have pushed to take drastic action that raises questions about the responsibilities of states to offer diverse academic offerings — particularly at land-grant institutions in rural areas that traditionally lack access — and could be an early indicator of shifting priorities nationwide.

    With a budget shortfall projected to grow as high as $75 million in five years, West Virginia University is proposing cutting 32 programs — 9% of the majors offered on its Morgantown campus — including its entire department of world languages, literatures and linguistics, along with graduate and doctoral degrees in math, music, English and more. Other U.S. universities and colleges have faced similar decisions, but this is one of the most extreme examples of a flagship university turning to such dramatic cuts — particularly when it comes to foreign languages.

    After an appeals process last week, school officials pivoted to recommending that WVU’s board of governors retain five out of 24 full-time world languages faculty to teach some in-person Chinese and Spanish. They also moved to save the school’s graduate creative writing program, which had been slated for elimination. But the English department would still lose a little over a fourth of its instructors under the current plan, which WVU’s board will vote on Sept. 15.

    WVU has labeled the shift an “academic transformation” amid an “existential crisis” in higher education. Speaking to faculty this year, WVU President Gordon Gee said higher education has “lost the support and trust of the American public.”

    “I want to be very blunt: We have been isolated, we have been arrogant, we have told the American public what they should think,” he said, adding that institutions like WVU have to “turn that around almost immediately, otherwise we have a very bleak future.”

    But critics see a different a set of circumstances, accusing the administration of financial mismanagement, poor strategic planning and lack of transparency in a state with the lowest rate of college graduates and highest rate of population exodus.

    After being named WVU’s president in 2014, Gee promised to increase enrollment to 40,000 students by 2020, which never materialized. Instead, the student population at West Virginia University has dropped 10% since 2015, while on-campus expansion continued.

    WVU has spent millions of dollars on construction projects in recent years, including a $100 million new home for the university’s business school, a $35 million renovation of a 70-year-old classroom building and $41 million for two phases of upgrades to the football team’s building.

    The crisis, which the American Federation of Teachers called “draconian and catastrophic,” has drawn outrage at WVU, where hundreds of students staged a protest against the cuts.

    Freshman math and English major Joey Demes already had several college credits when he was looking at colleges. Demes was in the foster care system until he was 18 and chose WVU based on the strength of its math program and financial support the institution offered that “other colleges would not have.”

    Now, he said he feels like both majors are being attacked.

    “This is where I’ve grown up and lived and it is upsetting for me,” he told the university’s board Aug. 22, adding that he plans to continue his math education after undergrad and become a researcher. “What I’m being told with the grad program for math being cut, is that you guys don’t want me here, that you want me to go to another state and get an education elsewhere.”

    Leaders agree that education is a key tool to attracting young people and improving quality of life in West Virginia, but WVU’s predicament has raised serious questions about what kinds of education add the most “value.”

    For the GOP officeholders, value is in economic development and promoting innovative programs — like cybersecurity — that can’t be found almost anywhere else. Many at WVU, however, say the school’s diverse offerings give students opportunities they might not be able to access — or afford — elsewhere that are just as valuable.

    “We all know what’s going on at WVU, and they will work out their problems,” Republican Senate President Craig Blair said during the signing ceremony at Marshall. “Our No. 1 export has been our youth. That must change.”

    As the flagship, WVU has always received a larger share of higher education funding, state leaders say. The school received $50 million from the state just two months ago for its cancer institute. But some insist money hasn’t always been spent wisely.

    Lawmakers recently approved a higher education funding formula rewarding schools for degree attainment, workforce outcomes and graduate wages.

    Republican Senate Finance Chair Eric Tarr said the way to benefit from the formula is to “provide degrees that lead to jobs.”

    “WVU is now making changes that will permit that to occur,” he wrote in an opinion piece, raising concern about what he called “unbridled spending by liberal ‘educators’” across the country.

    Professor Lisa Di Bartolomeo, who coordinates the university’s Russian studies and Slavic and East European studies programs, said the long-term effect of the program cuts will be profound. Di Bartolomeo said the blow to WVU’s language arts alone is the most extreme “that anybody has seen anywhere in the country.”

    “I hope this is not a sign of things to come, but I do worry that it may be, and that other places will see what WVU is doing and say, ‘Oh, well we can get away with this, too,’” she said.

    Mary Manspeaker, an English Ph.D. student, said she left her home state at 18 because she didn’t see opportunity in West Virginia. She came back to the university where her parents went because her research is focused on Appalachia.

    “To come back and be told that the English department doesn’t matter, that I was right, that there might not be a place for me in West Virginia is heartbreaking,” she said.

    Peter Lake, who directs the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Florida’s Stetson University said that in recent decades, institutions have increasingly taken a more business-focused approach centering on “return on investment.”

    The concern for a flagship like WVU, Lake said, is whether these cuts eliminate a pathway for liberal arts studies for most students, preserving them only for “elite institutions that fairly wealthy or very fortunate people can attend.”

    He said the conflict reflects the fundamental question in higher education right now: How do we assess value?

    “Where is the real wealth and where does it lie?” he said. “And it might be in cash, endowment and buildings, but it could arguably be in other things.”

    ___

    Raby reported from Charleston, West Virginia.

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