With relentless partisanship gripping Kevin McCarthy’s House, bipartisanship is in the air.
New York Representative Mike Lawler is among a group of five GOP moderates who claim they might vote with Democrats to avert a government shutdown if House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is unable to get a stopgap spending bill to the finish line.
Lawler is from a left-leaning District in Westchester County, and he says he’d work with the Democrats if the only alternative is a shutdown.
Representative Anthony D’Esposito, another first-term Republican from a Long Island district that went for President Biden in 2020, also says he is “very frustrated” with certain Republicans who have so far blocked passage of pretty much everything (even their own bills); as a result, he’d back a compromise with Democrats if it came to that.
And Representative Marc Molinaro, a fellow freshman Republican who represents a swing district stretching from the Catskills, also has put a team-up with the other party on the table should it keep the government open.
If five Republicans buck their party, it could allow them to get a spending bill through in the House, which has a small GOP majority.
