Rep. Mulvaney: House Likely to Pass Senate Bill by Large Margin

Republican U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney says he won't be joining them, but he expects a large majority of Republicans to join Democrats in passing a Senate bill Wednesday night to temporarily fund the government and raise the debt ceiling. 

"There'll be a small group that votes against it," Mulvaney said Wednesday on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper." 

"My guess is that it'll pass overwhelmingly out of the House tonight, with both Republican and Democrat support," Mulvaney, R-S.C., told Tapper.

The bill, the result of a deal struck by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would fund the government until Jan. 15 and raise the debt ceiling until Feb. 7.

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Mulvaney acknowledged that Republicans who warned that the tactic [to stop passage] wouldn't work were right, but he said he and other conservatives were fighting for the right reasons.

It was President Barack Obama, not conservative Republicans, who caused the shutdown, Mulvaney said. The president refused to talk to Republicans for the past three years, he said.

His caucus was not fighting to defund Obamacare, he said, but simply for "equal protection under the law." Individuals should be afforded the same one-year delay as Obama's friends and supporters have gotten, he said.

Though some have speculated the ordeal has weakened House Speaker John Boehner,  who has proved unable to corral his party into voting with him, Mulvaney said Boehner has emerged "100 percent stronger."

"No one blames him for this. We did not have the votes yesterday," Mulvaney said. He said he and fellow Republicans Justin Amash, Jim Jordan, and Raúl  Labrador were unable to bring in the votes for a compromise bill Tuesday night.

"We could not get him the votes," he said. "That was our failure."