Congress, unable to muster enough support, postpones the House GOP's key debt vote. By Alex Altman | @aaltman82 | July 28, 2011 | + Tweet Alex Wong / Getty Images. The House Republican leadership came up short Thursday evening in their effort to round up enough votes to pass Speaker John Boehner's debt ceiling bill, delaying consideration of the doomed proposal until Friday and exposing deep fissures within the fractured GOP conference. After hours of debate over Boehner's bill, known as the Budget Control Act, the Republican leadership team pulled the bill from the floor late Thursday afternoon to buy time to sharpen their pitch to recalcitrant members. Hours later, after cajoling their members with pizza boxes during a series of closed-door whip sessions, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy announced around 10:30 p.m. that the vote would not happen until Friday at the earliest. Republicans, who have 240 members in the House, need 217 to pass legislation. Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer has repeatedly said the GOP would not get Democratic votes. Delaying the bill twice was a clear sign that Boehner and his top lieutenants could not bring their members behind the proposal. The lack of a unified voice covered a night of high drama at the Capitol, as Republican leaders scrambled behind closed doors to marshal support for a bill they had pitched as the best option for Republicans but then abandoned in favor of another plan. Rank-and-file members - many of whom fell into the "no" and "undecided" columns - streamed in and out of the leadership office, often tired and tersely speaking. Louie Gohmert, one of about 25 Republicans who said they would reject or not support this direction, called it a "bloody, worn-out number." While state and federal lawmakers could give a few legislators a pat on the back, there were enough stubborn refusers to deliver a shocking rebuke to party leadership. The House Rules Committee met shortly before midnight Thursday to prepare the measure ahead of a planned party meeting Friday morning. The all-out lobbying effort will resume then as Boehner, having failed to quell a rebellion on his right flank Thursday, tries to reassert control over his troops. With the possibility of default only four days away and Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid working to kill the measure and replace it with one of his own, the Speaker and his deputies can't afford another time-consuming debacle.