House Freedom Caucus (HFC) members announced their conditions for supporting “a short-term extension of government funding through a Continuing Resolution (CR)” and vowed to oppose “any such measure that continues Democrats’ bloated COVID-era spending and simultaneously fails to force the Biden administration to follow the law and fulfill its most basic responsibilities.”
The 42-member HFC, which represents the most consistently conservative representatives in the lower chamber of Congress, described its conditions on the CR issue in an Aug. 21 statement.
Because Republicans control the House of Representatives by only four votes, the support of the HFC is critical to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) ability to complete the 11 outstanding major appropriations bills once the Sept. 30 end of the current fiscal year arrives.
But the HFC made clear in the Aug. 21 statement, as did several members of the caucus did last week to The Epoch Times, that maintaining the current level of expenditures is a dead-on-arrival approach.
Passage of a “‘clean’ Continuing Resolution would be an affirmation of the current FY 2023 spending level grossly increased by the lame-duck December 2022 omnibus spending bill that we all vehemently opposed just seven months ago,” the HFC statement reads.
Instead, the HFC statement states that members will only support a CR that meets three essential conditions, including “the House-passed Secure the Border Act of 2023 to cease the unchecked flow of illegal migrants, combat the evils of human trafficking, and stop the flood of dangerous fentanyl into our communities.”
The legislation, called the Secure the Border Act, would restore many of the policies implemented by former President Donald Trump, such as resuming construction of the border barrier.
It would also restrict asylum by mandating that migrants cross legally, pay a $50 fee, and meet more stringent standards to demonstrate that they’re fleeing political, religious, or racial persecution.
It also seeks to increase the number of Border Patrol agents.
The second HFC condition is that the group’s members want the CR to “address the unprecedented weaponization of the Justice Department and FBI to focus them on prosecuting real criminals instead of conducting political witch hunts and targeting law-abiding citizens.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a co-founder of the HFC, is also chairman of the panel’s Weaponization of the Federal Government Subcommittee.
The third HFC condition, according to the statement, is bringing about an end to “the Left’s cancerous Woke policies in the Pentagon undermining our military’s core war-fighting mission.”
Numerous HFC members have expressed opposition, for example, to the policy of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to use tax dollars to pay the costs of military members who must travel across state lines to obtain an abortion.
The conservative House members also included in their statement a warning to Mr. McCarthy that they “will oppose any attempt by Washington to revert to its old playbook of using a series of short-term funding extensions designed to push Congress up against a December deadline to force the passage of yet another monstrous, budget busting, pork filled, lobbyist handout omnibus spending bill at year’s end and we will use every procedural tool necessary to prevent that outcome.”
The HFC statement also declared opposition to “any blank check for Ukraine in any supplemental appropriations bill.”
