House Republicans pushing for more spending cuts in Congress’s annual spending bills are in for a fight — including pushback from their Senate GOP counterparts. The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports: “Senate Republicans are signaling that they’re in no mood to back conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus who are demanding major concessions from Democrats in the annual spending bills, raising the odds of a government shutdown this fall.”
Bolton cites Senate sources who say that GOP members there aren’t likely to back Freedom Caucus efforts to cut discretionary spending beyond the levels agreed to as part of the deal to raise the debt limit earlier this year. “Nor will House conservatives get much help from Senate Republican leaders on insisting that ambitious conservative priorities, such as the House-passed Secure the Border Act, be attached to spending legislation,” Bolton adds.
Senate Republicans don’t have any chance to win 60 votes for cuts that go beyond what President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to in May — and little appetite for a shutdown. “One of the main goals has been to return to somewhat of a normal appropriations process to avoid a big omnibus at the end,” one Senate Republican aide reportedly told The Hill.
The House Freedom Caucus announced recently that it would oppose a stopgap spending bill unless it includes a number of policy measures. Beyond spending cuts, those include a Republican border bill, changes to end what conservatives call the “weaponization” of the Justice Department and a crackdown on what they see as “woke” Pentagon policies.
A fight over those Freedom Caucus demands, all of which are nonstarters for Democrats, would only delay spending bills, creating a jam toward the end of the year and raising the likelihood of a massive omnibus package or a longer-term stopgap that would automatically include a 1% across-the-board spending cut under the terms of the debt limit deal.
That means that McCarthy faces critical choices as he decides what to include in a House stopgap funding bill and where to look for votes to pass such legislation. “This is now the most important fight he faces as speaker and the choice between kind of the campaigning arm, the House Freedom Caucus arm, and the actual governing arm of keeping a government running,” says Casey Burgat, the director of the Legislative Affairs Program at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, told U.S. News.
McCarthy will have to decide whether he sticks with his conservative members to push a bill that can’t get through the Senate or whether he turns to House Democrats to help pass a funding bill — and risks a conservative challenge to his speakership.
McCarthy may be in a no-win situation, but Freedom Caucus members may feel like they can’t lose because, as Kaia Hubbard of U.S. News writes, “if the government shuts down and Republicans are blamed, the conservatives won’t be on the chopping block like their colleagues in swing districts.”
The bottom line: There’s been talk recently that the Senate may act first on a short-term spending bill. Still, a government shutdown this year “looks more likely than not,” as Goldman Sachs economist Alec Phillips told clients recently. “Other issues, like aid for Ukraine, funding for Justice Dept. investigations, or border security could hinder progress, and the spotlight that the recent sovereign downgrade shines on the fiscal situation adds to the risks.”