GOP Rep. Jim Jordan speaking at a tea party shutdown rally in March (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)
GOP congressman Jim Jordan, head of the 175-member Republican Policy Committee, bails:
Add Rep. Jim Jordan, leader of an influential group of conservative Republicans, to the list of GOP lawmakers who will vote against the budget deal that averted a government shutdown.
Jordan, R-Ohio, is chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, whose ranks include dozens of the freshmen GOP members allied with the small-government Tea Party movement. He says the measure, which cuts $38 billion in federal spending for the remaining six months of fiscal 2011, doesn't go far enough.
Jordan's defection comes as Republicans admit they might not have enough votes within their caucus to pass the budget plan, meaning they would need to turn to Democrats for votes:
While only 28 Republicans voted against the bridge plan to keep the money flowing until Thursday’s vote, it is highly likely that some of the Republicans who supported that measure were looking to avoid a government shutdown and will vote nay on the bill to finance the government through the rest of the fiscal year.
In a meeting with reporters, the House majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, while saying it was his understanding that the bill had “strong Republican support,” conceded Tuesday that he was not certain the bill would pass without support from Democrats. “Certainly we’ll always ask for them,” he said about Democrats.
It only takes two-dozen defections for the GOP to need Democrats to get a bill passed, so Friday's vote to avert a shutdown would not have passed without Democratic support. Unless Republicans figure out a way to flip some of those twenty-eight members who opposed the stop-gap, they're going to need Democrats to vote for the final deal.
As amusing as it will be seeing John Boehner rely on Nancy Pelosi to get the deal through the House, the real implication will be that going forward, the extreme right flank of the GOP will have proved itself utterly irrelevant to the process. If they couldn't support a simple CR to complete the FY2011, there's no way they'll be able to support funding bills for FY2012 and beyond. And if the only thing they are ever going to do is vote 'no,' then there's no point in including them in negotiations, because when it comes to getting things done, they just don't matter.