A procedural vote in the House to move forward on its fiscal year 2024 defense appropriations bill failed 212 to 214 on Tuesday, after several hardline conservative GOP members broke from their party to vote against the measure.

This is the second time in two weeks progress on the $826.5 billion defense spending bill has stalled, after House Republican leadership pulled a vote on the rule for the appropriations bill last week.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) speaks during an indoor ceremony at Marine Barracks Washington, D.C., May 18, 2018. (Official Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Robert Knapp/Released)

Reps. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) and Ken Buck (R-Colo.) joined all Democrats in voting against Tuesday’s effort to bring the bill to the floor for debate.

“I took down the rule – as I vowed I would – because the [Republican] Conference continues not to have moved 12 appropriations bills at the spending level agreed to in January,” Bishops said in a statement following the vote, referring to the debt limit deal agreed to earlier this year. “I assume leadership believes me now.”

Tuesday’s vote is another complication to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) efforts to make progress on spending bills as lawmakers look to avoid a government shutdown with the end of the fiscal year looming.

The House Appropriations Committee (HAC) advanced the $826.5 billion defense spending bill with a party line vote in June, after Democrats objected to the legislation’s nearly $2 billion cut to multi-year procurement for select munitions and a slew of GOP-led proposals Democratic members criticized as “needlessly divisive” (Defense Daily, June 22).

“For the second week in a row, the House Republican majority has failed to bring important spending bills to the House floor for a vote to keep the federal government open and funded,” Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), ranking member on HAC’s defense subcommittee, said in a social media post on Tuesday. “They have squandered precious time as the end of the fiscal year approaches, with no backup plan to pass these critical funding bills and keep the government open. This is a catastrophic meltdown that greatly increases the risk of a government shutdown.”

On Sunday, House Republicans rolled out their deal for a one-month stopgap funding bill to avoid a government shutdown which would exempt defense from a spending cut and has an anomaly for the Columbia-class submarine program but does not include funds for Ukraine aid (Defense Daily, Sept, 18). 

The continuing resolution proposal received immediate pushback from Democrats and some GOP members, and the measure is also likely to face steep opposition with the Democratic-led Senate for its cuts to non-defense spending and lack of Ukraine assistance.