Washington Wednesday: Continuing irresolution

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 15th of November, 2023. Thank you for joining us for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Time now for Washington Wednesday.

Well, as you just heard, last night the U.S. House passed a temporary funding bill to keep the government open into the first few months of 2024. The way the bill is set up, some government agencies would receive funding through January. Others, through February.

REICHARD: Washington Bureau reporter Leo Briceno explains what it took for Speaker Mike Johnson to cross this hurdle, and what’s next.

LEO BRICENO, REPORTER: Forty-seven days ago, the House of Representatives voted to pass a temporary spending extension to avert a government shutdown. And last night, they did it again…kicking the can into early new year.

STEVE WOMACK: The bill is passed and without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table.

Funding for 2024 remains a question mark—and a massive headache for the newly-appointed Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson.

When asked about Speaker Johnson’s decision to bring the temporary spending package to the floor, Texas Representative Chip Roy expressed mixed feelings.

CHIP ROY: This is not the right approach, he knows that’s how we feel. Speaker McCarthy had seven, eight, nine months to go through that process. He’s had 15, 17, 18 days. We’re going to give him a little bit of room, but I’m not going to give any room on my analysis of this bill. This is not the right step forward, but you know, we’ve sent it over. The Senate is going to take it up, so it is what it is now. But nobody sent me here to keep spending at those levels with those policies, period.

A brief recap: On paper, the government is supposed to pass 12 appropriations bills that fund individual aspects of the government: agriculture, defense, and so on. But for the past 40 years, Congress has taken all of those individual bills and sandwiched them into one massive “omnibus bill.” These massive spending packages are easier to pass, they’re quicker to deal with, and so that makes them really useful in the time crunch. But many conservatives in the House believe they come at the cost of meaningful congressional input. Instead, they are enabling a larger and larger bottom line.

These days many Republicans want to go back to the 12-bill method…and Speaker Johnson is doing his best to do just that.

The House of Representatives has already passed 7 bills that cover about 75 percent of the funding for next year. From a numbers perspective, that seems pretty good…right?

But it's deceiving. Because while there are only a few bills left to go, it seems like the House is having a really hard time deciding its priorities.

GREEN: You know, the Republican party is divided along multiple dimensions. And it’s not just left and right.

That’s Dr. Matthew Green, Chair of the Department of Politics at The Catholic University of America.

MATTHEW GREEN: It has to do with things like what is the best strategy or tactics that a party should take? How confrontational should it be? What’s the role of the federal government, both at large and in specific programs ranging from agriculture to defense? It’s divided over views on compromise. More traditional Republicans believe that you’ve got to compromise—you know you give some, you get some, that’s how it works. Others are more wedded to their ideological positions and say compromise is equivalent to defeat.

Some of the sticking points of those negotiations right now include elements like funding for Israel and Ukraine, the U.S. southern border, elements of the farm bill like food stamps, and more.

But those internal negotiations within the Republican majority are only a part of the picture.

Any bill that passes the House of Representatives must also somehow make it through the Senate and then win the signature of president Joe Biden to become law. As of Tuesday evening, the Democratically-controlled Senate has only passed one of these bills and the chamber leadership disagrees strongly with the direction Republicans have taken. The bills Republicans have passed cut spending in a number of different ways. The bill on transportation, for instance, looks to cut spending by about $7 billion in that department. President Biden has called these kinds of cuts irresponsible and he’s expressed frustration at the internal Republican negotiations that are holding up the process.

BIDEN: I’m sick and tired of the brinkmanship, and so are the American people. I’ve been doing this, you all point out to me a lot, a long time. I’ve never quite seen a Republican congress or any congress act like this.

Even after all the negotiations and deal cutting to get Republicans on the same page, Speaker Johnson could still be left holding nothing—if his bill ends up getting rejected by the Senate and White House. That’s what prompted him to pass the continuing resolution, to gain more time with temporary funding.

But it comes at a price.

This exact situation got Johnson’s predecessor, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, booted from the job in October. As soon as many of the Republicans who had been calling for increased fiscal restraint heard that Johnson wanted to extend current spending levels—without any cuts—they said the deal was off.

On Monday, I asked Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, one of the bill's opponents, what Johnson could’ve done to gain her support.

LEO: Earlier today Chip Roy mentioned that he wanted to see at least one policy win in that bill. Is there any one particular thing that you’d want to earn your support for the CR?

GREEN: In a clean CR I don’t see many policy wins.

LEO: But what one change would you make?

GREEN: I wouldn’t—I’d say we’re not doing a CR. We’re doing our appropriation bills, and the Senate needs to do its job. That’s what we should be doing.

Green went on to say she’s extremely disappointed in the newly-minted Speaker for even suggesting the idea.

GREEN: I think it’s a failure. I’m not voting for a clean CR. I’m not carrying on Nancy Pelosi’s budget. I’m not carrying on all the woke policies and the excessive spending that the Democrats set forth. I think we should be holding the line. We should finish our appropriations, and we should force the Senate to do their job, and Joe Biden to sign these bills. And we can get this done if we get to work.

Republicans like Green don’t see the CR as a temporary funding solution. They see it as a temporary extension of irresponsible fiscal policy. That makes it a far cry from what they had hoped to see out of Speaker Johnson.

When it came time to vote last night, over 40% of House Republicans rejected the motion to pass the bill. That means Johnson was only able to pass the CR with the help of all but two Democrats. Still, he now has at least three months to negotiate with House Republicans and Democrats, along with the White House and Senate. But even with that extended runway, it’ll be a tough landing.

The nuclear option for Johnson is to pass an omnibus bill that goes around this whole conversation on spending in 2024. But that would be politically devastating for the newly minted speaker. Johnson rose through Republican ranks three weeks ago, largely because of a promise to pass single-subject spending bills instead of mammoth packages. A temporary funding bill is bad enough for some Republicans. A full-scale omnibus bill might be enough to trigger another motion to vacate.

For now, not all Republicans see the issue on the same level as Representatives Roy and Green. New York Representative Marcus Molinaro has been a strong advocate for a return to the appropriations process. On Monday, I asked him if he saw the issue the same way as some of his more hawkish colleagues.

MARCUS MOLINARO: The CR avoids a Christmas eve spending bonanza that congress has often engaged in. It avoids a government shutdown, and provides us the time necessary to consider single-issue appropriations bills. These are all the things we fought for. These are all the things that we would want. And some of my colleagues are more interested in being right than necessarily doing what is right.

The path to appropriations remains a sharp matter of division for House Republicans…despite their shared focus on the final destination.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno.

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