Some conservatives, optimistic that former President Trump will likely retake the White House in November, have proposed a stopgap budget that would extend into next year rather than expire during the lame-duck session while President Biden is still in office.
Parliament’s 12-year budget proposal for fiscal 2025 is due on Sept. 30, but negotiators have already said interim measures will likely be needed to keep the government afloat until after the November election.
And rifts have already emerged among members over how long these measures should last.
Some conservatives have argued extending the stopgap measures beyond January would give Trump more say in how government funds are spent for much of next year if he wins.
“First of all, we have to get a budget in place,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) told The Hill earlier this month, but because a stopgap measure would likely be needed in September, Scott proposed one “to last maybe until March of next year.”
“That way it’s not done in a lame duck period where we’re wasting a lot of money on a big omnibus budget, and it also gives the next president the power to have a say,” he said.
Other conservatives have made similar arguments in recent weeks, saying a stopgap measure until next year would make it less likely that lawmakers will be forced to accept a omnibus budget at the end of the year.
“It can be extended from Sept. 30 to March 31,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said Wednesday, adding, “I don’t think a lame duck should have the authority to do what we were trying to accomplish in December.”
“We have to give the president time and address the debt ceiling issue. Maybe not right away, but we have to start doing all the preparations to address the debt ceiling issue, address reconciliation and address spending issues.”
“Why would we have $35 trillion in debt and let a potentially lame-duck politician decide how the country spends for another year? I don’t think we should be doing that,” said Rep. Byron Donald (R-Fla.).
Meanwhile, other Republicans have said they want Congress to finish funding work during the lame-duck period given an already packed legislative schedule for 2025, when new fights over the national debt ceiling are expected and key tax cuts from President Trump’s signature 2017 tax reform law are set to expire.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said earlier this month that he “understands” the conservative effort but “doesn’t agree with it.”
“I think they believe, and I agree, that we’re going to win the election, and they think that that’s going to increase their influence,” Cole said. But similar tactics used in the past haven’t always produced the greatest effect on influence, he said.
“I was here when we tried that in 2017. We got the House, we got the Senate, and obviously President Trump won,” he said, but Republicans “didn’t have much more leverage in the United States Senate because we still have the filibuster.”
Cole was referring to the 60-vote threshold needed to pass most legislation in the Senate. A filibuster-proof “supermajority” is rare in the Senate. The last time either party had such a majority in the Senate was under former President Barack Obama.
“We are forced to [Trump] They had to sign a bill that they couldn’t even negotiate… frankly, they [Office of Management and Budget] “The secretary who fired him at the time wouldn’t do that,” he said. “I don’t think he’d do that with the new president, and frankly, I don’t think he’d do that with the new Congress.”
“They’re going to be asked to vote on bills that they have absolutely no stake in and that they’ve never had a chance to understand,” Cole said. “They’re not likely to be on the Appropriations Committee on either side. That’s not fair. So this Congress should do its job within the two-year time frame.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, said Wednesday that “thoughtful discussions” were taking place about “what we ultimately do” with the GOP.
“All of these approaches have their pros and cons,” he said when asked about the debate over the temporary measures, noting concerns that they could be extended into the spring and that this could “disrupt the calendar a bit.”
“In my first 100 days, when there’s so much else I want to do and I have to deal with a budget, we’re trying to balance all the interests and do what’s most responsible for the country, both fiscally and policy-wise,” he said.
Meanwhile, some Democrats have already begun to dismiss the idea of a stopgap measure until early 2025.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said last week that the proposal to delay the funding agreement until next year was “unacceptable.”
“He can’t win. This is unacceptable. We’re going to do it in the lame-duck period. We’ve done it before in December. We’ll do it again,” she said, pointing to how the annual budget fight played out during the last legislative session that ended in March.
“I mean, we’re six months into the fiscal year. This is not governance,” she said. “That’s what we came here for.”
As partisan and intraparty divisions over spending and policy – primarily among House Republicans – dragged on for months, Congress had to pass several stopgap measures to avert a government shutdown as part of a fight over fiscal year 2024 funding.
Negotiators tasked with drafting the annual budget have blamed delays in drafting the budget for the next fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1, for the protracted and messy budget battle.
House Republicans have been moving quickly this year to pass annual budget bills out of committee and hope to pass all 12 bills on the floor before the August recess.
The party scored a small victory earlier this month by passing its first budget bill for fiscal year 2025, earmarking roughly $379 billion for Veterans Affairs and military construction programs through most of next year.
But leaders still face tough challenges trying to pass the remaining 11 bills, especially as negotiators work out annual budgets for agencies like the FBI and promise deep cuts to non-defense programs that could present tough votes for moderates ahead of the November election.
Meanwhile, the Senate has yet to pass a funding bill as negotiators say they are still trying to reach an agreement on overall funding levels.
