Vice President JD Vance cautioned House Republicans Tuesday that if they vote against their party’s funding bill—and the government shuts down this weekend—they will be blamed.
“We already lost one vote, we can’t lose another,” sources said Vance told GOP lawmakers during a private meeting ahead of a scheduled late afternoon vote on a bill to extend government funding for another six months.
Vance’s plea for votes was directed at a handful of House Republicans who have expressed misgivings about supporting the legislation crafted by House Speaker Mike Johnson and blessed by President Donald Trump. The bill would increase defense spending and ramp up funding for ICE to fulfill Trump’s campaign promise to carry out the largest mass deportation in American history.
The House is expected to vote on the bill late Tuesday afternoon ahead of Friday’s midnight shutdown deadline.
Vance also noted that Senate Democrats would likely take the blame if the stopgap government funding measure doesn’t get through the upper chamber, where the bill faces an uphill battle. The vice president sought to exert White House pressure on House Republicans to rally behind the legislation, known as a continuing resolution, and not join Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), the lone dissenter who Trump has vowed to unseat.
One of the GOP holdouts, Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida, was unfazed by Vance’s threat. “I’ve seen the bulls--t,” Cammack, who served as a House aide before becoming an elected official, told reporters.
Massie, a fiscal conservative who opposes the bill’s hefty spending, says he won’t budge in spite of the president’s threats.
“Congressman Thomas Massie, of beautiful Kentucky, is an automatic ‘NO’ vote on just about everything, despite the fact that he has always voted for Continuing Resolutions in the past. HE SHOULD BE PRIMARIED, and I will lead the charge against him,” Trump said in a late-night Truth Social rant Monday.
Massie trolled the president back on social media Tuesday.
Besides Cammack, other Republicans who said they’re on the fence about whether to back the bill include Reps. Tim Burchett, Eli Crane, Rich McCormick, and Beth Van Duyne.
“Someone thinks they can control my voting card by threatening my re-election. Guess what? Doesn’t work on me. Three times I’ve had a challenger who tried to be more MAGA than me. None busted 25% because my constituents prefer transparency and principles over blind allegiance,” Massie posted on X.
House GOP leadership has expressed optimism that they will pass the bill without the help of Democrats despite some uncertainty over the whip count in the hours leading up to the bill coming to the floor.
“We’ll have the votes. We’re gonna pass the CR. We can do it on our own,” he told reporters.
Republican leaders in the lower chamber canceled scheduled votes on Wednesday as part of an effort to ramp up pressure on the Senate, where the bill would require 60 votes for passage and the support of at least seven Democrats.
