Congress has made little public progress since January on its quest to hit a March 1 deadline to partially fund the government, and the three dozen members of the House Freedom Caucus are demanding an update.
Members of the conservative grouping requested an update from House Speaker Mike Johnson in a letter Wednesday on the ongoing closed-door spending negotiations, and included a list of conservative policy riders they want attached to the spending fight.
Lawmakers are currently on a recess that lasts until Feb. 28, and will only have a few days to pass stagnant spending legislation until the first deadline.
“With the expiration of government funding rapidly approaching, negotiations continue behind closed doors and as a result, we anticipate text for likely omnibus legislation that we fear will be released at the latest moment before being rushed to the floor for a vote,” the lawmakers wrote.
“House Republicans should not be left in the dark on the status of the spending levels and hard-fought policy provisions,” they said.
Congress is operating off its third short-term spending patch currently, which set deadlines of March 1 and March 8 to fund the government. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota has said that Republican leadership will not consider another stopgap bill.
That leaves Congress with the options of finishing spending work by the deadlines or tossing the government into a partial shutdown.
The last public update on the spending fight came in January when Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican, stood by his pact with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, to set overall spending levels at $1.66 trillion.
Since then, lawmakers have negotiated the individual spending levels for each of the dozen subcommittees that draft spending legislation, but have not made those numbers public.
Republicans have demanded that Congress pass spending bills one by one, a feat that has not been successfully accomplished since 1997. Though the House has passed seven spending bills, and the Senate has passed three, neither chamber has considered spending legislation since early November.
Along with an update on the spending fight, the House Freedom Caucus listed several conservative policy riders that they want to be attached to spending bills, including dropping Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ annual salary to $0, nixing the Pentagon’s abortion-travel reimbursement policy, and preventing President Biden’s student loan bailout plans.
It’s unlikely that any of their policy demands would be accepted by the Democrat-led Senate, however.
The lawmakers are leveraging their support of spending legislation with the policy riders, suggesting that they would support a year-long stopgap bill if they do not get their way.
Both Republicans and Democrats have viewed the year-long spending patch as a bad option because, among other things, it would trigger an automatic 1% across-the-board cut in funding, which defense hawks say would drastically hurt military spending.
“If we are not going to secure significant policy changes or even keep spending below the caps adopted by bipartisan majorities less than one year ago, why would we proceed when we could instead pass a year-long funding resolution that would save Americans $100 billion in year one,” the Freedom Caucus lawmakers wrote.