Boehner downplays spending bill delay

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) expressed confidence Thursday that House Republicans would pass a GOP budget deal and the first of 12 annual spending bills later in the day, despite some last-minute hiccups.

Action stalled earlier in the week when Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) blocked the budget agreement over objections to what he called “gimmicks” in the plan, disrupting House GOP leaders’ strategy to take up the spending plan before turning to specific appropriations bills.

By the time Corker relented and signed off on the budget Wednesday afternoon, another issue had flared up over the fiscal 2016 appropriations bill funding military construction and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

{mosads}Votes on the spending bill had been slated for Wednesday night but were pushed back a day over concerns about a bipartisan amendment that would scrap the use of a Pentagon war fund to pay for military construction projects. Defense hawks were opposed, but many were tied up in a late-night markup of a critical $612 billion defense policy bill, so GOP leaders decided to delay the spending-bill vote.

“Our goal, obviously, was to pass the budget before we started the appropriation process, but we had a little delay in terms of getting the conference report signed,” Boehner told reporters at a news conference Thursday, referring to the Corker holdup.

“All of the members of the House Armed Services Committee who were concerned about some of these amendments were in a markup on the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] until some 4:30 this morning,” Boehner added, “and so we just thought it was time to stop, go ahead and do the budget, and then resume the appropriations.

“It was a smart move on our behalf.”

GOP leaders have a lot riding on passage of the joint House-Senate budget resolution and the initial spending bills, which are regarded as the least controversial of the 12 annual appropriations measures.

For days, they have been bragging that this will be the first GOP budget passed in nearly a decade, and the earliest start to the annual appropriations process since 1974. But if the House passes the VA-related bill later Thursday, this year’s process will actually tie with last year’s for earliest start time.

“Americans needs real growth and that means real pro-growth policies to fix the Tax Code, expand American energy production and solve our spending problem,” Boehner said. “All of those things are in this balanced budget.”

One House GOP aide insisted that leadership’s decision to delay the appropriations vote had more to do with the Republican budget than the military construction spending bill.

The aide said delaying the measure gave leadership more time to whip votes on the amendment offered by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, and Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus. The amendment would have cut some of the extra funding going to the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund that allowed the Republican brass to appease defense hawks, who wanted more robust security spending.

GOP leaders, the aide said, essentially didn’t want to take the chance that the House would undercut the budget agreement with the Senate before it was enacted.

Van Hollen and Mulvaney, an unlikely pairing, argued that using the OCO to pay for military construction projects in locations that aren’t even war zones amounted to a “gimmick” that allows Congress to avoid spending limits set by the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA).

In an interview with The Hill, Mulvaney claimed his amendment had the votes from both Republicans and Democrats to pass later Thursday. He suggested that even Republicans who voted for the House GOP budget resolution were inclined to support it.

“I just know a lot of folks on our side of the aisle didn’t like using the slush fund to go around the BCA,” Mulvaney said.

Mulvaney was among the 17 House Republicans who voted against the budget resolution last month. He warned that he would likely offer a similar amendment to the annual defense appropriations bill this year.

The South Carolina Republican dismissed suggestions that his amendment alone would be responsible for derailing the first spending bill of the year and undermining Republicans’ message of showing they can govern.

Mulvaney noted that his proposal with Van Hollen would only apply to $532 million out of the $77 billion appropriated in the military construction measure.

“If in fact my amendment is what brings down this appropriations bill, then support for this bill must have been very tenuous,” Mulvaney said.

Van Hollen told reporters early Thursday afternoon that he and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) plan to send a letter urging House Democrats to vote for the amendments.

Bernie Becker contributed to this report.

This story was updated at 1:57 p.m.