House Republicans Demand Deep Cuts to Spending Bills They Rarely Support

WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders working to write and pass the spending bills that fund the government face a major hurdle: Their own party — especially their most powerful, arch-conservative faction — has spent the past decade assailing federal spending and, with growing frequency, casting vote after vote against it.

GOP members of the House have supported spending bills less than half the time over the past dozen years, according to a New York Times analysis of such votes since 2011. Hard-right lawmakers associated with the Freedom Caucus, which has been the most outspoken about slashing spending, have voted in favor of government funding bills less than 20% of the time. And a smaller bloc of ultraconservative members who have threatened to blockade the House floor if their priorities are not met has almost always voted against appropriations bills — in an average of 93% of cases.

Despite all of that, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, working to manage a right-wing revolt, has agreed to tailor the spending bills to the demands of a group of lawmakers who have rarely, if ever, supported such measures during their time in Congress. At their insistence, he has embraced funding levels far below what he agreed to in May as part of a deal with President Joe Biden to suspend the debt limit and avoid a federal default.

The approach could make it difficult to move the bills through the House and place the chamber on a collision course with the Democrat-controlled Senate that could lead to a government shutdown this fall. It promises to further complicate a process that was already going to be extraordinarily difficult, as top members of Congress try for the first time in years to enact individual spending bills to fund all parts of the government in an orderly fashion and avoid the usual year-end pileup.

With only four votes to spare and Democrats uniformly opposed, the resistance by the most conservative Republicans will make it extremely difficult for McCarthy to win approval of any spending bill. Even if he can do so, the resulting bills would likely have no chance of passing the Senate, increasing the prospects of a government shutdown in the fall and automatic across-the-board cuts in 2025.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/02/us/house-republicans-spending.html">The New York Times</a>.