Reality bites House Republicans ahead of January shutdown deadline
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House Republicans have entered holiday recess resigned to the prospect of punting again on their spending priorities to avoid a government shutdown.
Why it matters: Fear has gripped some in the House GOP about getting jammed by the Senate on a massive omnibus spending package, raising the odds that the House chooses to instead extend former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) budget into 2025.
State of play: The first government shutdown deadline is just days after Congress returns in early January. Republicans have made little progress on appropriations since the last stopgap funding bill in November.
- While some GOP hardliners have argued that a shutdown would be better than getting squeezed with an omnibus, most are calling for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to go full throttle on getting the most conservative deal possible.
- Plenty can happen in the next month, but the expectation among many House Republicans is that the least-disastrous option at the deadline will be to pass a yearlong spending extension.
Zoom in: Language in this year's debt limit deal would trigger 1% across-the-board spending cuts if Congress doesn't pass a permanent budget by April 1.
- In November, Congress passed a two-step stopgap measure to fund four federal agencies until Jan. 19 and the rest until Feb 2.
- GOP proponents argued it put Republicans in the best position to avoid getting rolled with an omnibus rather than passing individual spending bills, but some members fear that the two-step approach did little to change their leverage.
- A divide remains between the House and Senate over spending levels, with Johnson pushing for the $1.59 trillion level set in the debt deal negotiated under former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). The Senate is angling for a side deal to provide an additional $14 billion in emergency spending.
What they're saying: "I'm an optimist and a realist, so I'm hopeful we can get done these appropriations bills. ... [Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)] isn't going to release control over the appropriations process in the Senate, which means he's going to work toward two minibuses," Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) told Axios.
- Cline added: "We all want to avoid a shutdown and we're going to try and pass the appropriations bills and get focused, but we have to get focused on the next year's appropriations process, so we are learning from the errors of this year so we can avoid them next year."
- "I guess they're going to dare us to do the CR — that's what it kind of looks like," said former House Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who argued that Johnson should use the threat of blanket cuts in a stopgap bill as leverage in negotiations.
- "We should find a top line that was negotiated by McCarthy and the president. This shouldn't be so hard," one moderate Republican said. Conservative hardliners "have voted against the CRs anyway. I have implored the speaker to start negotiating. The Senate won't get to 60 without him."
The other side: Democrats have warned that if House Republicans push to go below the threshold agreed upon in the debt deal, a shutdown could be imminent.
- "[W]e are either going to agree to keep the agreement that had been reached ... or the extreme MAGA Republicans in the House are going to shut down the government," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters last week.
