Appropriators, conservatives clash on punting government funding decisions to Trump administration

Republicans who want President-elect Donald Trump to negotiate the next spending deal are clashing with congressional appropriators who want to finish the annual government funding bills this year. 

Government funding is set to run out Dec. 20 unless Congress acts. Lawmakers are debating whether to pass another extension of current funding levels to kick the deadline for a new spending agreement into next year, when Mr. Trump takes office. 

But appropriators — the lawmakers in charge of negotiating the 12 annual spending bills — prefer to hash out a deal before the Dec. 20 deadline. 

Republican appropriators, in particular, don’t want to add government funding to Mr. Trump’s early to-do list.

“I want to have a clean slate for them, and I think it’s really important that we try to get the work done,” said Sen. Susan M. Collins, Maine Republican. 

Ms. Collins is the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee but will become the chair next Congress when Republicans take over the majority. Given that she would be in a stronger negotiating position next Congress, it is notable she wants to clinch a spending deal this year. 

“I really think that we can do it if the leaders agree,” Ms. Collins said. 

While the prospects for a government funding deal remain murky, congressional leaders and appropriators seem to agree on the need to quickly move a separate emergency funding bill for disaster aid. 

President Biden on Monday submitted a new supplemental request for $100 billion in aid to help Americans harmed by natural disasters, including Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

A significant portion of the request, $40 billion, is to replenish the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund. The remaining money Mr. Biden requested would fund other disaster relief programs across a variety of government departments, including the Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation Departments, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Small Business Administration.

House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro, Connecticut Democrat, said Congress should work to deliver the disaster aid “right away” and not wait to package it with the annual government funding measure.

Her thinking is in line with Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, who has said the House would consider a stand-alone disaster aid bill as soon as all the needs from the recent hurricanes were calculated. 

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said in floor remarks Monday that he hopes “the speaker honors that commitment and works with Democrats to get disaster aid done as soon as we can.”

“We should not kick the can down the road nor withhold vital resources the federal government needs to properly help recovering communities,” the New York Democrat said.

The top four congressional leaders — Mr. Johnson;  Mr. Schumer; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican; and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrat — have said little about their preferred approach to meeting the Dec. 20 deadline beyond needing to prevent a government shutdown. 

Mr. Johnson has gone the furthest, saying that reaching a new spending deal in the next month may not be feasible. 

“We’re running out of clock, Dec. 20 is the deadline,” the speaker said on Fox News on Sunday.

“We’re still hopeful we might be able to get that done, but if not, we will have a temporary measure, I think, that would go into the first part of next year and allow us the necessary time to get this done,” Mr. Johnson said. “I think that would be, ultimately, a good move because the country would benefit from it because then you’d have Republican control and we’d have a little more say in what those spending bills are.”

Mr. Johnson’s comments were noncommittal but did signal he may end up siding with conservatives who want to kick the funding deadline to early in Mr. Trump’s term. 

Rep. Eric Burlison, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told The Washington Times he prefers a short-term stopgap so Mr. Trump can put his mark on spending, while still limiting the time the government is operating under a “Biden-Schumer” budget. 

The Missouri Republican was not concerned that punting the spending fight into Mr. Trump’s first 100 days in office would eat away at time that could be used to push his agenda through Congress.  

“What I find is that this town, I think if you want to get stuff done, you can,” he said.

Yet, some other conservatives prefer a longer measure that would last through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. 

While Congress could still replace the extension of current funding levels — known as a continuing resolution or CR — with a newly negotiated spending package before the fiscal year is up, the longer stopgap would ensure Mr. Trump does not face any urgent deadline to keep the government operating. 

House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris, Maryland Republican, told The Times he prefers a yearlong funding patch, “but I only get one vote.” 

Mr. Harris is an appropriator and his position is a departure from most of his colleagues on the spending panel, who want to avoid a full-year CR because it would limit the government’s ability to start new programs or invest money in new areas.

However, Mr. Harris said he would want a full-year CR to include “stops and starts” for defense spending, presumably to give the Pentagon more flexibility than a normal funding extension would provide.

Ms. Collins said she wants to avoid any CR but particularly one that punts funding to the end of the fiscal year, because it would trigger automatic spending cuts set up under last year’s debt limit law to penalize Congress if it fails to pass annual appropriations bills by April.

“If we don’t get this done, the caps reset based on the fiscal year ’23 budget,” Ms. Collins said. “That causes defense spending to be cut by more than 5%, and that would be devastating.”

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, Florida Republican and a senior appropriator, agrees it’s better to secure a spending deal this year and let the incoming Trump administration begin with “a new slate with a new agenda.”

He told The Times he has been around long enough to learn that a change in administration typically only results in a “marginally better deal” for the party taking control because the Senate’s 60-vote threshold still necessitates bipartisan cooperation.

The main obstacle to getting a deal done before Dec. 20 is that leaders have yet to negotiate a “top-line” number on how much discretionary spending Congress should approve for fiscal 2025, which began Oct. 1.

The funding extension the government is currently operating on is based on the fiscal 2024 negotiated top-line of $1.659 trillion, which includes $69 billion that was offset through spending rescissions and budgetary accounting tricks to ensure total spending did not breach the debt limit law’s cap of $1.59 trillion.

The debt limit law allows for a 1% increase in fiscal 2025, setting a cap of $1.606 trillion. Some congressional leaders are likely to again push for more spending, with offsets or accounting gimmicks to comply with the overall cap.

Ms. Collins and Ms. DeLauro said congressional leaders need to negotiate a new top-line deal by the end of this week if appropriators hope to negotiate the remaining details of the 12 annual spending bills to meet the Dec. 20 deadline.

“We should get it done. There isn’t any reason not to get it done,” Ms. DeLauro said.