Congress is on summer break. Funding 'chaos' awaits.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said on social media last month that the 'deal' to get House fiscal conservatives to support final passage of the GOP domestic policy megabill in July was that funding for the new fiscal year would be 'at or below' current levels. 'That is already negotiated,' insisted Roy, a member of the House Freedom Caucus.
The House and Senate are already endorsing drastically different funding levels in the appropriations bills they have been able to advance so far. The funding measures House Republicans rolled out earlier this summer would meet spending-cut demands by cleaving non-defense agencies by almost 6 percent overall and keeping the Pentagon's budget flat. Senate lawmakers, on the other hand, have proposed $20 billion more for the military and at least modest funding increases for most non-defense agencies.
If House conservatives get their way in September, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will be under intense pressure from his base to threaten a government shutdown unless the GOP agrees to some concessions. Republicans need Democratic votes in the Senate for any legislation to clear the 60-vote procedural hurdle to move forward, and the New York Democrat already endured a political drubbing in March after helping advance a Republican funding bill days before the start of a shutdown he worried would end up empowering Trump.
'If we have to swallow a House-only radical Republican bill, that's going to be a problem,' said Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.).
Schumer has to balance the desires of his progressive base with the demands of his more centrist flank. In a floor speech Saturday morning, he praised the Senate-passed funding package as 'an example of how the funding process could work if the other side is willing to work in good faith, instead of listening all the time to Donald Trump and Russell Vought and the extreme right.' But he also warned, 'the onus is on the Republican Majority ... to ensure this process stays bipartisan in the fall.'
And least one member of his caucus said he's not interested in Democrats playing hardball: Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) has vowed, 'I'm voting to keep the government open.'
In the meantime, Thune is already mulling how to pass a second tranche of funding bills. That next bundle could include some of the largest, and most contentious, appropriations measures containing money for the Pentagon, as well as dollars for key Democratic priorities like labor, education and health agencies. He is also predicting that the Senate bill will, on the whole, freeze or cut funding compared to current levels — a possibly winning pitch to his own fiscal hawks and those in the House.
Yet even with signs pointing to future conservative strong-arming, Senate Democrats are warily leaning into bipartisan funding negotiations after Republicans burned them last month by passing Trump's request to claw back $9 billion from public broadcasting and foreign aid.
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