The US House budget process ground to a sudden halt Thursday amid simmering conflicts over spending levels and hot-button social issues, raising the risk of a government shutdown ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline.
(Bloomberg) — The US House budget process ground to a sudden halt Thursday amid simmering conflicts over spending levels and hot-button social issues, raising the risk of a government shutdown ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline.
Lawmakers in the House and Senate are leaving Washington this week for an extended August recess with budget disagreements entirely unresolved.
The House isn’t scheduled to return until Sept. 12 with a long to-do list that includes passing 11 of the 12 annual appropriations bills and reconciling differences with the Senate over the course of just 12 planned work days that month.
A stop-gap spending bill could also be a tall order, given deep divides on spending and indifference among ultra-conservatives over the effects of a shutdown.
“We should use a government shutdown as a leverage point if necessary,” Representative Bob Good, a Virginia Republican, said this week. “Most of what we do up here is bad anyway.”
President Joe Biden and congressional leaders had hoped a hard-fought compromise on spending caps as part of a deal to avoid a US debt default would pave the way for a relatively smooth budget process. But a push by conservatives to make deeper cuts and attach language on abortion, transgender and other social issues has upended those plans.
Intra-party squabbling forced House Republicans to scuttle plans to pass a bill funding the Agriculture Department before they left town. Moments before, the chamber squeaked through legislation funding military construction and veterans programs — typically the least contentious of the bills.
“Now, the Republican conference is saying they are sending us home for six weeks without funding the government?” House Democratic whip Katherine Clark said. “This is a reckless march to a MAGA shutdown.”
Ultra-conservatives want to gut the House spending bills — which are already lower than the caps in the debt deal — by an additional $115 billion.
That rear-guard effort isn’t flying with more moderate Republicans, or with Democrats.
“You might as well throw the bill on the floor and stomp on it at that point,” Republican appropriator Mike Simpson said of the push to cut more spending from the Interior Department funding package he authored.
In the Senate, Republicans have joined Democrats in drafting bills that are $14 billion above the caps, using a loophole that allows spending to be designated as an “emergency” to evade limits. Those measures have all been passed by committee but the full Senate hasn’t voted on any of them.
Stopgap Hurdles
Further clouding the picture is a dispute over funding for Ukraine. Senate Democrats and Republicans say they’re prepared to provide additional funding for the Ukraine war.
The additional funding, the request for which could come within days, could be attached to a stopgap spending bill to keep the government open beyond Sept. 30. But McCarthy and other House Republicans are poised to oppose the effort because it would exceed the caps.
The administration also is expected to request disaster-related money for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose accounts are projected to be depleted soon. That could also spur opposition from some House Republicans, further jeopardizing any temporary spending measure.
What’s more, fiscal conservatives say, a stop-gap bill would mean extending funding at the higher levels approved by last year’s Democratic Congress, well beyond the agreed-upon spending limits.
These conservatives also are demanding the House pass bills that are free of what they consider gimmicks — clawbacks of previously approved funding to meet the total.
The indifference to a shutdown by conservatives rankles more moderate members of the House Republican conference, who want the House and Senate to work out a compromise spending package.
“It doesn’t help when some of our most conservative friends have a constantly moving set of demands. It makes it very hard to satisfy them,’ said senior Republican lawmaker Frank Lucas of Oklahoma. “If we can’t pass two of the most basic appropriations bills then it doesn’t bode well for the Fall.”
He predicted that by October the conflicts will escalate into “chaos.”
–With assistance from Billy House.
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