Key lawmakers in the government spending fight as a shutdown nears

With the possibility of a government shutdown just hours away, lawmakers in Congress are scrambling to try to find a way to extend government funding past Saturday’s critical midnight deadline.

A shutdown could affect millions of Americans and have significant impacts across the country, from federal agencies to national parks.

Here are key lawmakers to watch in the ongoing negotiations on Capitol Hill:

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is at the center of negotiations and faces a major leadership challenge: getting the House on board with a plan to keep the government open. Because of the GOP’s razor-thin majority in the House, the California lawmaker needs nearly all of his conference’s votes to get a plan through the chamber if he wants to pass a bill on a party-line vote.

That includes conservative hardliners, who McCarthy has struggled to unite with the rest of his conference. Earlier this year, it took 15 rounds of voting over multiple days for McCarthy to secure enough votes to win the speaker’s gavel. And in May, McCarthy needed to rely on Democratic votes to pass a measure to lift the nation’s borrowing limit, a move that warded off what could have been a catastrophic default.

McCarthy has continued to insist that a government shutdown is the worst possible option. “I don’t think shutdowns ever help,” he told reporters Tuesday.

Still, McCarthy continued to face challenges Friday when the House failed to advance a last-ditch stopgap bill to extend government funding beyond Saturday.

The shutdown negotiations come as some members, Rep. Mat Gaetz among them, have suggested that they would consider ousting McCarthy from his post through a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair. It’s a rare procedural tool that allows any one member to trigger a House floor vote to oust the speaker. The move was one of the major…