By a vote of 190-230, the House yesterday failed to pass the continuing resolution (CR) that would temporarily fund the government while FY2012 appropriations are completed. Forty-eight conservative Republicans voted against the bill, largely arguing that it did not cut enough spending; all but 6 Democrats also voted against it, largely because it forces emergency spending for recent natural disasters to be offset with spending cuts.

Bills do not fail on the floor of the House very often. [UPDATE: See this post for more info.] This is because the  majority leadership has almost total agenda control. They choose what is brought to the floor, they have a majority on the floor, and a majority can pass a bill. Even in cases when a measure gets to the floor and the leadership realizes there is not majority support for it, they don’t have to lose a vote: they can pull the bill and not have to take the vote. So what happened yesterday?  Either the leadership thought they had the votes, and was blindsided by defections either left or right or both (probable), or they were playing a strategic game of chicken with either the Senate or the House Dems (unlikely but plausible).

So what now? Three points:

1) A shutdown just became more likely. Or, more accurately, our current information reveals that the probability of a shutdown is higher than previously thought.  The last two major issues in the house (the FY11 long-term CR and the Budget Control Act) were passed by the center holding together against the wings of each party. It’s not clear now that such a center exists. The Democrats and conservative Republicans have both signaled a position, and buying up votes on the left or right may lose as many votes on the other side as it gains.

2) In the meantime, the House leadership has a strategic choice to make today. The Rules committee met last night to pass a same-day waiver, so the wheels are in motion to bring a new bill to the floor today. The leadership can bring back a more conservative bill and pass it on a party-line vote. Or they can dump the offsets and try to win back the centrist Democratic votes. If they do the former, it lays down a marker and escalates the strategic game of chicken against the Senate. But it doesn’t really get us closer to a deal, and portends a long week. If the do the latter, they run the risk of an all-out conservative revolt. My intuition is that the latter is the plausible endgame here. But this isn’t the end. Expect a more conservative bill today.

3) How will the Senate respond? Majority Leader Reid has indicated that any offset bill is a dead-letter in the Senate, but it’s not obvious he has the votes to hold that together in the face of a shutdown. If a non-offset bill can’t sustain itself in the Senate, then one endgame seems pretty simple: buy up any liberal filibuster, pass an off-set compromise based on the House-failed bill, and roll both wings in the House by putting it back on the floor there, where I think it would pass in a second go-round. But if Reid can demonstrate that no offset bill can sustain itself in the Senate, the brinkmanship could really escalate, especially because the opposition of the House Dems will solidify.

Jonathan Bernstein, who has been predicting CR shutdown crisis while many of us (including me) thought the BCA would prevent it, gets a lot of credit right now.