House GOP seeks government funding reset

House Republicans are seeking a reset on government funding after last year’s chaotic — and prolonged — spending process, increasing pressure on House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who already faces an uphill climb to achieve many of the conference’s objectives.

The push for a clean slate on 2025 spending comes shortly after the House completed fiscal 2024 appropriations, which required four funding stops, brought Washington to the brink of several closure cliffs and led to the ouster of the former House speaker. , Kevin McCarthy (R-California). ).

But as Republicans look to cut spending and avoid a year-end omnibus, obstacles are emerging: deep divisions across the conference, an increasingly narrow majority and the pressures of an election year.

“It’s going to be extraordinarily difficult,” newly appointed House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told reporters Monday when pressed about the challenges of crafting annual funding bills for the 2025 fiscal year, adding that “every day we get closer to the election, the more reluctant Congress will be to do this.”

In some ways, the looming battle over government funding for fiscal 2025 mirrors the debate from the previous year: leadership seeks to pass laws through regular order and hardliners push for deep spending cuts, while while facing the challenges of an extremely small majority.

But this year, elections are expected to increase pressure on the appropriations process. Some lawmakers will try to score political points on Capitol Hill that could translate into winning voters on the campaign trail, while others avoid any action to see who will be the next occupant of the White House.

These dynamics are fueling the expectation among legislators that, despite the initial stance, nothing substantial will materialize in spending before November, a dynamic even for the main appropriators. are recognizing.

“Things are highly politicized. Each side is looking to raise issues and score points rather than pass legislation,” Cole told The Hill in an interview earlier this month. “It’s just the nature of the beast.

“But there’s also, to be fair to everyone, the consideration of ‘Well, maybe we should wait until the American people make a big decision,’” he continued. “And there’s a lot at stake.”

Hard-line Republicans, however, are already vowing to bring full court pressure on the appropriations process for fiscal year 2025, after being disappointed with the outcome of fiscal year 2024.

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said the effort will begin “immediately.”

“Fiscal year 2024 will obviously come to an end tomorrow. You start fighting right away for FY25,” Good told reporters in March.

“Very disappointed with what happened with last year’s budget,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a member of the Conservative Caucus, said last week. “I hate that it was suspended, nothing was cut; we basically took the Schumer-Pelosi playbook and ran with it. So we will definitely have much more severe cuts than we have had this time.”

Cole — who was unanimously recommended to be the new spending chief by the House GOP Steering Committee — said he would prefer Congress finish its annual funding work by its usual shutdown deadline of late September. But he also acknowledged that with the upcoming elections, Congress is headed for a stopgap in September to avoid a funding lapse, putting any spending battle on hold until after voters go to the polls.

Cole, in that case, said the appropriation process would fall into the hands of the winners.

“The winners basically make the decision about what you’re going to finish by the end of the calendar year [or you’re] going to next year? he said.

Johnson, however, seeks to speed up this process to avoid chaos and delays.

Days before winning the speaker’s gavel in October, Johnson established a vigorous schedule to complete the fiscal 2025 appropriations process on time. By the end of April, their goal is to reach consensus at the conference on budget levels for 2025 and pass a budget resolution. By the end of July, he wants the House to complete consideration of spending bills for the 2025 fiscal year.

Adding to the pressure, the Louisiana Republican said the House should not go into August recess if it had not passed all 12 appropriations bills.

But that timeline will likely be pushed back as Congress considers a long list of tasks leading up to the fall.

At the top of that agenda is passing legislation to help Israel and Ukraine. Foreign aid has been stalled in the House for months, despite impassioned pleas from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to help embattled U.S. allies.

In an interview with The Hill earlier this month, Cole said that “the most important thing” the House GOP majority can do right now is submit their spending bills to committee, noting that “nothing is going to happen until that happen”.

His goal this summer is to get all 12 annual government funding bills out of full committee “as quickly as possible.”

“Obviously, we don’t decide when they will go into the room,” he added. “This is a leadership decision and it is a complicated decision. It was complicated last year, it will be even more complicated this year, given the margin we have so far.”

Last month’s passage of government funding bills for fiscal year 2024 capped a bruising months-long process for House Republicans, as divisions between various conference factions over spending and policy areas raged. Thorny issues such as abortion dominated attention over the summer, leading to a historic ouster of the party leader and subsequently.

And now, Johnson faces the same threat to his gavel as his predecessor, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) threatening to force a vote to remove the House speaker.

Greene introduced a motion to vacate — the same tool used to remove McCarthy — against Johnson last month, but has not yet said when she plans to force a vote on the measure.

The move came as the House approved a sweeping $1.2 trillion government funding package for the remainder of the fiscal year.

While many at the conference dismissed the threat, it marks one of the latest examples of growing frustration with Johnson on the party’s right flank.

For months, conservatives have criticized Republican Party leadership and at times staged riots on the floor over concessions made in bipartisan funding negotiations.

Although Republicans did not achieve in bipartisan spending packages the significantly lower funding levels they advocated in their initial partisan spending plans, the party boasted of reductions in non-defense programs as well as guaranteed investments for programs defense, for the border and for veterans.

Cole said he doesn’t expect the party to “depart too far” from the maximum number negotiated as part of the bipartisan spending limits agreement last year. However, he suggested there could be some leeway to be had in future negotiations with Democrats, as the budget caps deal has met with strong opposition from conservatives, requiring drastic funding cuts.

“Speaker Johnson has shown that he is capable of getting a few more concessions than even McCarthy could, so there may be some wiggle room,” Cole said.