Conservatives pitch pushing government funding into 2025

Optimistic about former President Trump’s chances of winning back the White House in November, some conservatives are floating a funding stopgap that would extend into next year rather than expiring during a lame-duck session when President Biden is still in office .

Congress’s 12 annual funding bills for fiscal year 2025 are due Sept. 30, but negotiators already say a stopgap will likely be needed to keep the government open until sometime after the November elections.

And disagreements are already appearing among members about the duration of such a measure.

Some conservatives argue that extending the stopgap until January would allow Trump, if he wins, more information about how government funding will be executed for most of next year.

“First of all, we must do the budgets first,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida) told The Hill earlier this month. But, in the likely event that a stopgap is needed in September, Scott suggested a stopgap “probably until next March”.

“So we can make sure this isn’t done in a spur-of-the-moment fashion where people waste a lot of money on a big bus and we’ve already given the next president the ability to have a say,” he said.

Other conservatives have made similar arguments in recent weeks. Some also say a stopgap until next year would lessen the chances of lawmakers having to swallow a comprehensive year-end package.

“You could go from September 30 to March 31,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said Wednesday, adding, “I don’t think lame ducks should control the power of what we tried to do in December. ”

“You give the president time to come in, you have to deal with the debt ceiling, maybe not immediately, but you have to start organizing everything to deal with the debt ceiling, to deal with what we will have in terms of reconciliation and deal with the issue of expenses.”

“Why are we going to allow potentially lame politicians to set spending in this country for another year with $35 trillion in debt? I don’t think we should do that,” said Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Florida).

At the same time, other Republicans say they want Congress to finish its funding work during the crisis period, as lawmakers are already facing a busy calendar for 2025 — when another fight over the US debt limit is expected. country and important tax incentives under the Trump government. signature of the 2017 tax law is about to expire.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who heads the House Appropriations Committee, said earlier this month that while he “understands” the pressure from conservatives, he does not “agree with it.”

“I think they believe, and I agree, that we will win the presidential election and they think that will give them more influence,” Cole said. But, he said, similar strategies undertaken in the past have not always had the biggest impact on leverage.

“I was around in 2017 when we tried this, and we had the House, the Senate, obviously President Trump won,” he said. But Republicans still “have no more influence because there is still a filibuster in the United States Senate.”

Cole was referring to the 60-vote Senate threshold needed to pass most bills. A filibuster-proof majority, or a “supermajority,” in the Upper House is rare – the last time either party had such control in the Senate was under former President Obama.

“We force [Trump] having to sign bills that he was unable to negotiate… Frankly, they didn’t even have one [Office of Management and Budget] director at the time we completed it,” he said. “I don’t think you can do that with a new president and, honestly, I don’t think you can do that with a new Congress.”

“They will be asked to vote on bills that they had nothing to do with and that they had no chance to understand,” Cole said. “None of them are likely to be on either side’s Appropriations Committee. It’s simply unfair. Therefore, this Congress must do its work within the two-year period.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Wednesday that there is a “thoughtful discussion” about what Republicans will “ultimately do.”

“There are pros and cons to all of these approaches,” he said when pressed about talk of a stopgap. He also noted some concerns about a stopgap that would extend into the spring and how that would “overwhelm the calendar a little bit.”

“If you have to deal with appropriations in the first 100 days when we have all these other things we want to do,” he said. “So we’re trying to balance all of those interests and do what’s most responsible for the country, fiscally responsible and also politically responsible.”

Meanwhile, some Democrats are already closing the door on the idea of ​​a stopgap in early 2025.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, last week called the proposal to delay a funding deal until next year “unacceptable.”

“He’s not going to win. It’s unacceptable. We’ll do it on the lame duck. We’ve done this in December in the past. We will do it again,” she said, before pointing out how the last annual fight for funding in Congress, which ended in March, unfolded.

“I mean, six months into the fiscal year. That’s not governing,” she said. “That’s what we came here to do.”

Congress had to pass several stopgaps as part of the fight over fiscal year 2024 funding to keep the government from shutting down, as partisan and intraparty divisions, particularly among House Republicans, over spending and policy dragged on for months.

Negotiators tasked with drafting the annual funding bills attributed the unpleasant and protracted fight over funding to a late start to drafting the bills for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

House Republicans have moved quickly this year to pass their annual funding legislation out of committee, hoping to pass all 12 before the August recess.

The party scored a small victory earlier this month by passing its first funding bill for fiscal year 2025, establishing about $379 billion in overall funding for much of next year for the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction programs.

However, leadership still faces difficult challenges ahead as it tries to pass the remaining 11 bills, especially as negotiators craft annual funding for agencies like the FBI and promise major cuts down the road to other non-defense programs that they may prove difficult to vote for moderates. before the November elections.

The Senate, however, has not yet approved the funding legislation, as negotiators said they are still trying to reach an agreement on overall funding levels.