House Republicans scramble to pass stopgap funding bill (UPDATES)

The House passed a slightly rewritten version of a stopgap spending bill on Friday after rejecting the legislation on Wednesday, the New York Times reports.

House Republicans had scrambled on Thursday to find the votes to pass a short-term bill to fund the government past Sept. 30, after the bill they originally proposed was defeated 230-195 on Wednesday. Now the bill goes to the Senate, where Democrats want to spend a lot more than the bill allows. If Congress cannot agree on a stopgap funding measure by the end of next week, the government will be forced to shut down, the New York Times reports.

Wednesday’s short-term funding bill, designed to finance the government through Nov. 18, contained $3.65 billion for disaster relief, offset by $1.5 billion in cuts to an auto-company loan program. Almost all Democrats voted against it because they want more money for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and also because they oppose offsetting disaster aid with other cuts, which has not been done in the past, the New York Times reports.

Unexpectedly, 48 Republicans also voted against the bill, most because they thought the spending rates it set were too high. However, some Republicans who opposed the measure came from states like Michigan, where the auto-company loan program had created jobs.

"We're watching the Tea Party shut-down movie for the third time this year," Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the chamber's second-ranking Democrat, grumbled to Bloomberg News. "The American people are fed up with this strategy."

Speaker John A. Boehner met with Republicans Thursday afternoon to discuss tweaks to the bill and other bargaining that would win additional support from conservatives and Tea Party members, the New York Times reports.

According to the New York Times:

House Republican leaders, trying to recover from a humiliating political defeat, made one change in the bill. The new version would offset more of the cost of disaster assistance by rescinding $100 million from an Energy Department program that guaranteed a loan for Solyndra, the solar equipment manufacturer that filed recently for bankruptcy protection.

It was enough to bring more Republicans back into the fold, and the bill passed, 219 to 203.

Democrats were not impressed. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told the New York Times he had hoped House Republicans would move toward the middle. “Instead,’’ he said, “they moved even further toward the Tea Party.’’

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has urged the House to pass a short-term funding bill quickly, stating that government's main disaster aid account is "running on fumes" and could be tapped out as early as early next week, The Associated Press reports.

According to the AP:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has only a few days' worth of aid remaining in its disaster relief fund, lawmakers said. The agency already has held up thousands of longer-term rebuilding projects — repairs to sewer systems, parks, roads and bridges, for example — to conserve money to provide emergency relief to victims of recent disasters.