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WASHINGTON —Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives failed on Wednesday to pass a funding bill that included a controversial voting measure backed by Donald Trump, complicating efforts to avert a possible government shutdown at the end of the month.
Despite urging from Trump, the Republican candidate in the Nov. 5 presidential election, House Republicans were unable to muster enough votes to pass the package and send it on the Democratic-controlled Senate. With Democrats mostly united in opposition, the bill failed by a vote of 202-220, with 14 Republicans voting against and three Democrats in favor.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said afterward that he would craft a new temporary spending bill that would keep the government running beyond Oct. 1, when current funding is set to expire. He did not provide details.
"Now we go back to the playbook, draw up another play and we'll come up with another solution," Johnson said. "I'm already talking to colleagues."
Democrats in the House and the Senate say they are eager to pass a stopgap spending bill to avert a disruptive shutdown that would furlough hundreds of thousands of federal workers.
However, they opposed the version that Johnson brought to a vote on Wednesday, because it was paired with an unrelated voting bill that would require Americans to provide proof of citizenship when they register to vote and require states to purge non-citizens from their registration lists.
Johnson also has to contend with a contingent of Republicans who typically vote against stopgap funding bills.
Trump has made illegal immigration a central issue in his re-election bid and has falsely claimed that Democrats are registering illegal immigrants to vote, the latest in a long line of lies about election fraud.
House Republicans say their bill is needed to ensure that only American citizens vote. It is already illegal for a noncitizen to vote in federal elections and in state elections in every state, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
"It's already illegal for a minor to purchase alcohol, yet we still card them. We still enforce the law," said Republican Representative Aaron Bean.
Senate Democrats have refused to consider the Republican voting bill, saying it would risk disenfranchising legitimate voters while doing nothing to bolster election security. A 2017 study found 30 instances of suspected illegal immigrant votes out of more than 25 million cast.
Democratic Representative Steny Hoyer predicted that Johnson would ultimately bring up a straightforward spending bill that could attract Democratic support - a dynamic that has played out repeatedly over the past year as Republicans have been paralyzed by infighting.
"We've seen this film before. Let's just skip to the ending today," he said.
Congress faces an even more critical deadline on Jan. 1, by which time lawmakers will have to raise the nation's debt ceiling or risk defaulting on more than $35 trillion in federal government debt.
Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.