House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Tuesday that he still wants Congress to pass a budget this year, but a conservative rebellion has likely squelched those chances, forcing Republicans to plow ahead with the annual spending bills without the guidance of a full plan for the money.
Republicans are now almost certain to miss the April 15 deadline set by law for approving a budget, delivering a black eye to Mr. Ryan, a former chairman of the Budget Committee.
“We want to do a budget. That’s very clear. The question is, do we have the votes to pass a budget?” the Wisconsin Republican told reporters. “That’s the conversation we’re having with our members.”
Republican leaders have written a budget and earned enough votes to get it through the Budget Committee on a 20-16 vote.
But conservatives have vowed to sink it if it comes to the House floor, saying they want to see an additional $30 billion in cuts to reverse the spending deal that President Obama and Republican leaders reached in the fall.
“We’ve got to go back to our constituents with a straight face and say, ’We made up for the crap sandwich. We made up for the barn-clearing,’” Rep. Dave Brat, Virginia Republican, said Tuesday at a “Conversations with Conservatives” event hosted by The Heritage Foundation.
Mr. Brat was a little-known economics professor before he unseated then Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a June 2014 Republican primary, a stunning early indication of the wave of voter discontent with the party establishment in the past two election cycles.
House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price, Georgia Republican, tried to accommodate rebellious conservatives, including language in his blueprint that asked committees to find some $30 billion in cuts to automatic spending programs.
Yet conservatives said they do not want a “sidecar” bill that will die after a House vote. They said the cuts need to be part of a bill that will be signed into law.
“In my mind, it has to be something real,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican.
Democrats, meanwhile, have fumed over spending cuts and policy prescriptions in the plan, meaning Republican leaders cannot rely on them to make up the deficit of support from within the their party.
The budget is nonbinding but serves as an outline for Congress as it writes the dozen annual spending bills that fund most basic operations of government.
Even without a budget, the spending committee is moving ahead. House appropriators released their bill to fund veterans programs and military construction for 2017, calling for $81.6 billion, or $1.8 billion above this year’s levels.
Mr. Ryan said he did not want the Appropriations Committee “to wait around and then be caught flat-footed without their work done” while the party wrangles over its budget.
The budget and the spending bills are major tests for Mr. Ryan, who blamed his predecessor John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, for last year’s stormy process.
Conservatives, though, say Mr. Ryan has refused to use the leverage the House has to negotiate a better deal.
Rep. Tim Huelskamp, Kansas Republican, said the House should have tried to attach spending cuts to a short-term extension of federal aviation programs, which the chamber cleared this week.
“Will there be anything else that’s must-pass between now and the July recess? I don’t know. I don’t know if anything’s coming,” he said.
The Senate, also controlled by Republicans, is following the same path as the House. Leaders there have said they would put off consideration of a budget and move ahead with the annual spending process instead.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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