The small group of conservative lawmakers that has paralyzed the House is pushing Speaker Kevin McCarthy to back the defunding of more than 1,100 unauthorized federal programs in the upcoming government spending fight.
The demand is among several that hardline lawmakers allied with the conservative House Freedom Caucus want Mr. McCarthy to adopt in exchange for allowing Republican leaders to move ahead with their agenda.
“This is a real plan to put downward pressure on spending after the horrible [McCarthy-Biden] debt bill,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, Florida Republican. “We should be doing this asap.”
The idea of cutting off funding for government programs that have not been reauthorized by Congress was first floated by Rep. Ken Buck, Colorado Republican, over the weekend. Mr. Buck told the annual Western Conservative Summit that defunding such programs was an easy way to rein in federal spending.
“We have 1,118 programs that are unauthorized in the federal government,” Mr. Buck said. “It means when they passed a program like the Endangered Species Act of 1973, it had a five-year sunset on it … So in 1978, it was reauthorized. It has not been reauthorized since and every year we increase spending on the Endangered Species Act.”
Mr. Buck noted that both Democrats and Republicans had repeatedly waved House rules to keep unauthorized programs funded.
“We have a House rule that we pass every Congress, Republicans and Democrats, [that] you can’t appropriate money to an unauthorized program. We waive that rule in every appropriations bill,” said Mr. Buck. “We’ve been in power five months, and we have looked at zero unauthorized programs.”
Mr. Buck’s proposal has been endorsed by several of the lawmakers who voted with Democrats to block a slew of GOP initiatives from coming to the House floor last week. The blockade went on for nearly two days before Mr. McCarthy sent lawmakers home early for the weekend.
Conservatives are upset that Mr. McCarthy ignored their opposition and pushed through legislation suspending the debt limit until after the 2024 elections with help from House Democrats. They want Mr. McCarthy to rule out using Democratic votes on future legislation.
“We want him to choose us as his coalition partner, not the Democrats,” said Mr. Gaetz. “We can’t live in a world in which the Democrats are the coalition partner on the substantive and we’re the coalition partner on the frivolous. And that’s what we’re trying to work through.”
Given the narrow House majority, Mr. McCarthy can only lose four GOP lawmakers on any vote before having to rely on Democrats, as happened with the debt-limit deal. Democrats, however, were not willing to bail out Mr. McCarthy last week when it came to bringing to the floor GOP bills to block the White House from banning gas stoves.
That left Mr. McCarthy without a functional majority and paralyzed the House. The situation looked no better on Monday when lawmakers returned to Washington.
Mr. McCarthy scheduled a series of votes on non-controversial resolutions for Monday evening, but no one was sure if they would actually take place.
“I’m not sure when I’ll get it resolved,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, North Carolina Republican and a McCarthy ally. “There’s interest in getting things knitted back together. I don’t know if we’re hours away or days away. But it will be resolved.”
The Freedom Caucus nearly tanked Mr. McCarthy’s speakership bid this year. In exchange for allowing Mr. McCarthy’s ascension, the group pushed through a rules package that decentralized the power of congressional leadership.
The crux of the overhaul rests on a provision letting any lawmaker to force a vote on retaining the speaker, a threat that looms over Mr. McCarthy’s standoff with the conservative rebels.
Hard-liners have not expressly committed to ousting Mr. McCarthy yet. Instead, they are pushing for commitments that Mr. McCarthy only pass legislation with GOP votes in the future.
They also want Mr. McCarthy to agree to cut $130 billion from the upcoming government funding bill, targeting unauthorized programs if necessary. The demand contradicts Mr. McCarthy’s debt-limit agreement with the White House, which keeps domestic spending flat while hiking the defense budget by more than 3%.
• Haris Alic can be reached at halic@washingtontimes.com.
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