GOP plays blame game after funding bill failure

The House GOP’s inability to coalesce around a strategy to address a looming government funding deadline is sparking a blame game among Republicans, after opposition from multiple factions helped thwart Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) strategy to avert a shutdown at the end of the month.

Grappling with his razor-thin House majority, Johnson opted to try the spending plan proposed by hard-liners in the House Freedom Caucus: attach a conservative proposal, a bill to require proof of citizenship to vote, to a six-month extension of funding as an opening salvo to the Democratic-controlled Senate. Former President Trump has also called to condition government funding on the voting bill.

The Speaker, though, was forced to pull a scheduled vote on that legislation this week.

Now, Republicans frustrated with yet another legislative drama defined by GOP infighting are pointing fingers.

“It’s disappointing that we cannot get the majority of our own members to vote for a bill that they all support, which is attached, and support appropriations bill that are lower than their Democratic counterparts and are at the level that the law dictates,” House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said.

“I have no problem [with] what the Speaker is trying to do, I have a problem that members aren’t supporting what the Speaker is trying,” he added.

Opposition to the bill came from far-flung corners of the conference. Some fiscal hawks — mostly from outside the Freedom Caucus — objected to any funding extension. Defense hawks, headlined by House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), were concerned about the impact the bill will have at the Pentagon. And moderates worried about a shutdown threat so close to the election.

One House Republican, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic, slammed the hard-liners for derailing the Speaker’s negotiation tactic.

“Once again, the hard-liners swing and miss. They get nothing, because they don’t actually know how to negotiate,” the GOP lawmaker said. “If they can’t pass a bill, you can’t actually get something you want.”

But a senior GOP aide fired back at the those targeting the hard-liners.

“Moderates are like Democrats, they always want to blame conservatives, but this time it’s defense hawks who decided to grow a spine 30 days before the election,” the aide said.

And Cole — who said he understood where the defense hawks were coming from — also expressed disagreement with the opposition from that corner.

“I do not disagree with Mike Rogers, one of my closest friends in Congress … I do not want a six-month CR [continuing resolution]. But I still think it’s better to pass something and take the threat of a government shutdown off the table than to do nothing,” Cole said. “I’ve never had a bill that I thought, boy, that’s a perfect bill. Not a consequential bill. But it’s all a game of give-and-take and we need to do that. Right now, the Speaker’s bargaining for all of us.”

GOP lawmakers supportive of the funding gambit were hopeful that passing the conservative proposal would strengthen the conference’s leverage in forthcoming negotiations with Senate Democrats.

That effort has turned some of the typical GOP politics upside down, changing some usually antagonistic hard-liners into key proponents of the effort.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), the lead sponsor of the voter proof of citizenship bill — called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act — and advocate for pairing it with a six-month funding extension, who has found himself at odds with leadership in the past, lamented the opposition from some of his “self-described conservative friends.”

“They’re not actually giving the Speaker the ability to go do what we’re asking, generally, to go do. I find it ironic. But it is what it is,” Roy said.

“I don’t think we ought to be funding government without forcing some changes in reforms. Right? That was the point here,” Roy later added. “Can we get this in the next year, avoid a lame-duck omnibus? Can we force a question on something as important as voting integrity and American citizen voting? Some of my colleagues want to run around squawking about 12 appropriations bills when we only have five passed, in part because of debates back and forth within the conference.”

Other conservatives, however, have staked opposition to Johnson’s funding plan because of the lack of spending cuts and use of a continuing resolution, raising concerns about the ballooning deficit.

“We’re drawing ourselves into a complete economic collapse that we can’t come back from,” Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) told reporters while explaining his opposition.

A second House Republican expressed frustration with mixed messages from the right flank.

“What do they want? Regular order, or do they want to be in a position where we have a CR?” the House Republican said. 

Two of the Republicans publicly opposed to Johnson’s spending plan — Reps. Matt Rosendale (Mont.) and Andy Biggs (Ariz.) — are members of the Freedom Caucus. And in August, the caucus explicitly requested Johnson’s plan: a continuing resolution that runs into early 2025 paired with the SAVE Act.

Rosendale said his position should “dissuade one of the rumors that if you’re in the Freedom Caucus, that you have to vote just like the Freedom Caucus,” adding that the group’s members “have different things that they agree upon, plenty of things they don’t.”

Some Republicans suggested that those in the right flank are acting as disingenuous negotiators.

“I don’t want to be critical of anybody, but there are some who ask for things and even if they get it they still won’t vote for it, which then is pretty clear that they’re not dealing in good faith and that it’s all about getting press and getting clicks,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), a senior appropriator.

While the current dynamics are getting under the skin of House Republicans, it is not a new phenomenon for the conference.

House Republicans have tried to pass regular spending bills with funding levels they knew the Democratic-controlled Senate would never accept, only to pull the measures or watch them fail on the floor due to opposition from within the House GOP. A year ago, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) attempted a remarkably similar strategy — attaching a GOP border bill to a continuing resolution — that failed on the House floor, prompting him to pass a “clean” stopgap with the help of Democrats.

And while frustration is bubbling up in some GOP corners over the opposition to Johnson’s spending strategy, one House Republican said he is not phased because the behavior has been status quo this Congress.

“This sort of dynamic has happened enough times in the 118th that I wouldn’t say frustration is rising. I would say that, unfortunately, the membership has just kind of started to accept it as situation normal,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) said. “I still think we should be able to muster some frustration. We can be a better team. I think we need to be a better team. The stakes are high enough, we should get our act together and back the Speaker’s play.”