presented by BP.

Hey, good morning. I'm Playbook co-author Rachel Bade. It's Wednesday, September 27th.

Last night, both the House and Senate took procedural steps toward advancing spending legislation,

but this morning, Washington is no closer to averting a shutdown. If anything, lawmakers are further apart. In the House,

Speaker Kevin McCarthy's fractious Republican conference finally passed a rule governing debate for four

appropriations bills. These are the appropriations bills that conservatives have blocked from the floor

for months now. And sure, it's a tiny victory for Kevin McCarthy, but it doesn't address

the funding deadline that is now just four days away. The Senate, meanwhile, advanced a

continuing resolution that funds the government until November 17th. And 77 senators actually

agreed to this procedural move. This stopgap actually includes $6 billion

each for Ukraine and for disaster funding. But McCarthy is already saying the Senate plan is

dead on arrival in the House. Instead, he says he's going to be sending it back with

spending cuts and then a border crackdown. And that proposal, of course, as you know, is dead on arrival in the

Senate. During a presser last night, Congressman August Flunger, who's a Republican from Texas,

summed this up pretty aptly. He said, quote, the president needs to make a decision. If he wants to

keep the government open, he needs to shut down the border. No border security, no funding.

That pretty much sums up everything we're going to be talking about in the next couple of days.

Of course, it's not clear that McCarthy actually has the votes for his own continuing resolution

that includes this border crackdown. He did tell reporters last night that he would bring up this proposal

regardless of the whip count, but you have members like Matt Gates and his posse saying they

still have enough votes to tank any Republican CR. And McCarthy has actually dodged questions

about what he will do if Republicans can't pass a GOPCR at all. Does he put the Senate bill

...