Photo: Anna Moneymaker via Getty Images
Members of the House Freedom Caucus are making it harder for leadership to avoid a government shutdown, announcing on Monday that they'll oppose a stopgap funding bill unless it caves to their terms.
Driving the news: The HFC is demanding more funding for border enforcement, cuts to the Department of Justice and FBI, and an end to "woke" policies at the Department of Defense.
- "We refuse to support any such measure that continues Democrats' bloated COVID-era spending and simultaneously fails to force the Biden Administration to follow the law and fulfill its most basic responsibilities," they said in a statement.
- "Any support for a 'clean' Continuing Resolution would be an affirmation of the current FY 2023 spending level grossly increased by the lame-duck December 2022 omnibus spending bill that we all vehemently opposed just seven months ago."
The big picture: Congress is unlikely to complete its work on appropriations bills by the deadline on Sept. 30, with leadership calling for a continuing resolution to provide themselves with more time.
- "If you think we're going to come in and in three weeks, three partial weeks in September and get the appropriations bills done — that seems unlikely, given the extent to which there was a total failure in settings, spending levels where they needed to be set in order to get to 218," Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told Axios.
What's next: Some members have discussed potentially attempting to block a continuing resolution on legislation from reaching the House floor unless it meets their criteria, upping the likelihood of a government shutdown if Democrats don't vote for the measure.