The Club for Growth issued a “key vote” alert – meaning, voting the wrong way would go on the member’s permanent record, and risk a primary challenge – for the first tranche of Hurricane Sandy relief.
The relief bill passed anyway, with only 67 Republican “no” votes. Today, the Club wants members to back an amendment by Rep. Mick Mulvaney that would pay for more Sandy funding with an “across-the-board cut of 1.63% to all discretionary spending.” And that, on its face, would solve a lot of Republicans’ problems with the bill. But according to Rep. Peter King (who’s been tweeting his votes), the Mulvaney amendment would kill the entire package.
The votes are coming a bit later today – starting around 1:30 – so we’ll get another test of Republicans’ spending resolve. If the Mulvaney amendment goes down, it’ll be the third time this year, and the second time in this Congress, that conservative groups have demanded stand-your-ground spending principle from the GOP conference, and failed to get it.
UPDATE: The amendment got 157 votes, more than three-quarters of the conference. But it failed.
