House Republicans’ ambitious hopes of passing an annual government funding bill by next week are quickly crumbling as a tight timeline and intraparty rifts threaten approval of the 2025 spending plan.
Republicans had previously aimed to pass all 12 annual appropriations bills before the August recess, but that timeline has slipped after leaders delayed planned votes on funding bills for the Agriculture Department and Financial Services over concerns about reproductive rights riders.
Late Tuesday, a scheduled vote on a Department of Energy funding bill was abruptly canceled.
And now Republicans say party leaders plan to begin their August recess early this week, despite earlier plans to postpone votes on outstanding budget bills until next week.
One House Republican who spoke to The Hill said they had been told “unequivocally” by leadership that the House would not resume voting next week, and several others said they had heard similarly that the vote would likely be halted.
This would be a departure from what House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) vowed when he first took the speaker’s gavel that the House would not recess unless it passed all 12 bills.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, told The Hill on Tuesday that leadership will “have a formal announcement by tomorrow about next week’s schedule.”
Asked about the House’s plans to tackle outstanding budget bills, Rep. Scalise defended the House’s efforts so far but noted that staunch Democratic opposition and Republican defections pose challenges to the party’s efforts to approve the remaining bills.
“If Democrats get to a point where they’re voting against every single budget bill, then we’re going to hit a wall eventually, because we have a few members of our own senate who will vote against some of these bills.”
“We’ve given the Senate about 70 percent of the government’s budget. At some point, it’s time for the Senate to start doing its job,” he said. The Senate has yet to pass a single fiscal 2025 budget.
Republicans are trying to pass an annual spending bill this week covering the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior and other related programs that, if passed, would give Republicans approval for half of the annual government funding plan.
These bills are far more partisan in nature than those being crafted in the Democratic-led Senate, where most legislation requires 60 votes.
But it’s unclear whether House Republicans will be able to pass the rest of the budget bill, as divisions that stymied GOP efforts to pass the fiscal 2024 budget have resurfaced.
Earlier this month, a small faction of Republicans blocked the party’s attempt to pass a bill to fund the Legislature.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, said at a press conference this week that he had heard some “pro-life” concerns about changes to a farm bill that Republicans were expected to vote on this week.
Republicans made headlines earlier this year when they removed language restricting access to the abortion drug mifepristone from their budget proposal, after a similar move caused a fiscal 2024 plan to fail amid backlash from moderates.
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), chairman of the subcommittee drafting the bill, expressed confidence in the bill’s chances of passing in comments to The Hill on Monday. Harris noted that the legislation “will cut funding” and cited the House schedule, in which lawmakers are preparing a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, as a reason for postponing the vote this week.
“I think the main objections that were cited as the reason the bill didn’t pass last year have been removed, so I don’t think there’s an issue,” Harris, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said when asked about the bill’s lack of language about mifepristone.
But that hasn’t stopped others from challenging the move.
“That’s one of the issues I’ve raised,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), another member of the House Freedom Caucus, said when asked about the issue and his support for other measures.
“I think we need to know those things and know what we’re trying to accomplish overall,” he said. “So I think this bill is stalled right now and then we’ll have to see what kind of deal we can get.”
At the same time, a bill targeting funding for D.C., including emergency planning, security spending and other programs, is facing resistance from some moderates over a partisan-backed effort to target D.C. laws aimed at protecting employees’ reproductive rights.
The proposal was one of the reasons the party struggled to pass a similar funding bill last year, and if the bill remains in its current form it could lose moderate support again this time.
“I voted against the bill last year for several reasons, including that one, and I continue to oppose that provision,” Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) told The Hill about the matter earlier this year. “If it remained in the bill, I would vote against the bill again.”
A schedule previously proposed by House Republican leaders would have also included a vote this week on the Justice Department’s annual budget, but when pressed about that bill, Cole said “that’s always difficult,” noting that funding for FBI headquarters is “a big issue.”
His comments came months after hardline conservatives were infuriated that funding for a new FBI headquarters was included in the 2024 government budget bill, which ultimately passed Congress despite fierce opposition from the right in Congress.
But that doesn’t mean the leadership isn’t under pressure to move forward with passing the bill.
Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina said leaders should take “as much time as possible” to reach an agreement on the remaining funding bill, but he speculated that leaders are holding off on votes on some of the outstanding bills because they don’t have enough support.
“But that doesn’t work in the business world. If there’s a problem, you confront it,” he said.
