The House will leave on Thursday for August recess without resolving a key spending fight that has exposed divisions among Republicans with the threat of a government shutdown looming in the fall . The House had been expected to pass the bill to fund the Department of Agriculture the Food and Drug Administration and other related agencies this week but the internal GOP divisions derailed the effort . Government funding is set to expire at the end of September and the GOPcontrolled House is already on track for a showdown with the Democratcontrolled Senate with House Republicans pushing for lower spending levels . Some hardline members are signaling that theyd be comfortable with the prospect of a shutdown if it achieves their goal of slashing spending and driving down the national debt though they insist that a shutdown is not the goal . The situation poses yet another challenge for House Republican leaders who must attempt to unite their narrow majority around a minefield of contentious spending and policy issues . Republicans acknowledge theyll likely need to pass a shortterm stopgap measure to give them more time to finish the work of funding the government this fall. The deeper the spending cuts in the House bills the bigger the clash with the Senate in the coming weeks. Some members of their own party have said they’d be willing to accept a shutdown. Most of what we do up here is bad anyway. We should not fear a government … Most of it is bad. Most is good anyway. It is bad enough. We shouldn’t fear a shutdown, they don’t need to be bad. We don‘t want to be good enough. It’s not good enough, it’ll be bad enough, they’re not good. We’ve been good enough’d be good,’�t be
House to leave for August recess without resolving key spending fight . House to go on August
