Budget Process Gets Ugly Early, Yet Republicans Are Confident a Shutdown Won’t Come in the Middle of Election Season

House Republicans are moving with unusual speed to get their annual funding bills over to the Senate — a goal that they failed to meet last year, contributing to a nearly month-long vacant speakership. The party-line votes that have dominated the process so far are thanks, in part, to a number of very conservative amendments being attached to the bills, though several House members — conservative and more moderate alike — say there likely won’t be much acrimony or a government shutdown ahead of the funding deadline. The budget process last year was especially fraught. Speaker McCarthy was promptly removed from his position by all Democrats and eight Republicans after he passed what is known as a “continuing resolution” spending bill — meaning an extension of the current levels of government spending through a set date. Conservatives were enraged with Mr. McCarthy because he had promised never to do such a thing, yet ended up extending Speaker Pelosi’s 2022 budget. One of those members who was deeply frustrated at the time but did not vote to oust Mr. McCarthy, Congressman Ralph Norman, tells the Sun that the budget process is going much better this year than last, but he still has concerns. “It’s a lot better. It’s a big improvement,” Mr. Norman said after a series of amendment votes on Thursday. “Everything here moves slow. They’re cutting some things that I like.”Another more moderate member, Congressman Steve Womack, who heads one of the 12 appropriations subcommittees charged with writing the funding bills, says the process is working much better this summer than it did last year. “I’m not hearing a lot of pushback” from conservatives, Mr. Womack says. “Of course, we haven’t gone to the floor on 11 of the 12 bills … but when we do, I think that will kind of set the tone” and force the “hardcore, conservative bloc of the party” to get in line, he continued. Mr. Womack also says the upcoming election will likely force conservatives to accede to the demands of more moderate Appropriations Committee members in order to get out of Washington and on to the campaign trail. “We’ve got to keep in mind that we’ve got an election coming up, and I don’t think there’s anybody on our side of the aisle that is interested in flirting with a government shutdown,” he says. Conservatives in the House have gotten much of what they want in the first round of the budget process thanks to funding cuts and the addition of amendments. So far, the House has passed just one of the 12 yearly appropriations bills, but three more are expected to be passed on a party-line vote on Friday. The other eight are still making their way through committee, but could be brought up by the end of July or in mid-September. A diehard fan of President Trump in the House who is a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, Congressman Troy Nehls, tells the Sun that Republicans will get their work done, but the Senate will be their biggest obstacle. “I think we’re going to pass the appropriations bills, but then when they get over to the Senate, who knows what’s going to happen. They’ll probably butcher them up,” Mr. Nehls says. “It would be nice, but I’m not going to be optimistic.”A number of Republican-backed amendments have been adopted into the yearly bills for state and foreign operations, homeland security, and defense, which are the three pending appropriations bills set to be voted on this week. Congressman Andy Ogles’s amendment to bar certain Palestinian refugees from receiving work permits here in America was passed by just one vote as part of the Homeland Security funding bill. Republicans also successfully adopted an amendment that would reduce the homeland security secretary’s salary to zero. Even one Democrat, Congressman Jared Moskowitz, won an amendment vote as part of the state and foreign operations funding bill. By a vote of 269–144, the House included an amendment that would bar American officials from citing the death toll at Gaza that has been reported by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. In a rare act of bipartisanship, 62 Democrats voted for the amendment. Despite some substantive cuts to the federal budget and a number of successful amendment additions, Mr. Norman says the remaining eight appropriations bills will not be passed before the September 30 funding deadline due to conservative frustrations with some bills and the Democratic-controlled Senate. When asked if he was confident that the bills could be passed in time, he curtly responded: “No, I’m not.”“We all know whatever we send back to the Senate is going to come back a different version and it’s not going to be in our favor,” he said. Messrs. Norman and Womack both predicted that the House will likely have to pass another continuing resolution before September 30 just to keep the government open through the election. Senator Schumer, they say, is their greatest foe in the process of reconciling the funding deals from the House and Senate. “We’re probably going to be on a CR,” Mr. Womack tells the Sun. “We don’t control that because the Senate is going to be late. I think putting pressure on them is going to give us an opportunity to move us closer to the … solution rather than punting into next year.”“We’ve already changed the dynamic in the House by the movement of these bills to date,” Mr. Womack said with a hint of optimism.

Budget Process Gets Ugly Early, Yet Republicans Are Confident a Shutdown Won’t Come in the Middle of Election Season

More from the New York Sun

Is John F. Kennedy Having a Comeback?

Moody’s Warns on New York City’s Debt

One War Aim Might Require Boots on the Ground

Reckoning Ahead for Democrats Over Soaring Energy Costs

‘Insanity’: White House Blasts CBS News for Hiring Former Liz Cheney Staffer for Prestigious Job

Trump Walks Back Welcome After Iran Says It Won’t Play in U.S.-Hosted World Cup

Trump Administration Plans Jones Act Waivers in Effort To Lower Skyrocketing Fuel Costs

Paranormal Podcast Film ‘Undertone’ Upends the Horror Movie Genre, To Creepy Effect