House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will meet with dissenting House Republicans to resolve concerns that resulted in a dissenting vote by 11 GOP members on a procedural issue on June 6.
At stake is the ability of the House to function, especially in exercising one of its core constitutional duties, appropriating money for the federal government.
“We’re going to meet later today. Hopefully, [we’ll] get them all together there, and hopefully be able to do it,” McCarthy told reporters on June 12. “But if it takes me a day or two longer, I want to get it solved so it doesn’t keep erupting all the time.”
The dissenters are dissatisfied with McCarthy’s handling of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, a bill that passed with bipartisan support on May 31, ending the debt ceiling crisis. In protest, they sided with Democrats to prevent the House from voting on four Republican-sponsored bills.
The group members were dissatisfied with McCarthy’s compromise with President Joe Biden on the debt ceiling matter, claiming that he backed away too easily from some Republican demands. They also decried the use of what they saw as pressure tactics in whipping Republican votes for the measure.
After initial meetings with some of the dissidents, McCarthy put the House into recess at the end of the day on June 7, one day ahead of schedule. The House resumed business on June 12.
It appeared that no progress was made over the four-day weekend.
Unspecified Aims
Representatives opposing McCarthy are Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Bob Good (R-Va.), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), and Chip Roy (R-Texas).Gaetz and Boebert have said they’re troubled about the pressure put on some lawmakers to go along with Republican leadership and with the fact that no floor amendments were allowed on the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
“I think it shows that we’ve got some trust issues, and we’ve got to get those resolved,” Burchett told The Epoch Times on June 7.
When asked what he hoped to accomplish by putting pressure on McCarthy, Roy told reporters, “We’re having a conversation to figure out how we can get back to what was working.”
“Some of these members, they don’t know what to ask for,” McCarthy told reporters before leaving the Capitol on June 7. “There are numerous different things they’re frustrated about. So we will listen to them and we’ll solve this.”
Some Republican representatives are losing patience with the holdout group.
Fixing the System
Both McCarthy and those opposing him are trying to amend the way Congress operates.Boebert said her concern is having a say in the appropriations process, which requires the passage of 12 spending bills by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
“We’re being told right now that appropriations is when we’re going to actually get this right,” Boebert said on “War Room” on June 6. “Well, we don’t trust that because this has been broken. And so we want to make sure that there’s trust in place, structure in place, so appropriations can be done right rather than getting an omnibus bill December 24.”
McCarthy’s interest is to make Congress work effectively in general, not just in the appropriations process.
“What I really want to do here is make sure we solve [the problem] correctly,” McCarthy told reporters after arriving at the Capitol on June 12. “If we can get Congress doing their job like they’re supposed ... we can start looking at the problems for the future.
“If we’re bogged down on day-to-day things, we’re hurting the American public because we’re not thinking about the future to put us in a stronger position for tomorrow. And that’s why changing the way this place works is essential to being able to make that happen.”
McCarthy acknowledged that creating progress through the regular order of business isn’t the aim of all members.
No Simple Solution
Congress has passed all appropriations bills on time only four times since 1977, and not once since 1996.That creates chaos in the system and makes it more difficult for members of Congress to exercise influence over spending, according to William C. Greenwalt, a nonresident senior fellow at American Enterprise Institute.
“The inability to pass any of the 12 individual appropriations bills separately and on time is the result of the slow death of regular order in the Congress, the rise and consolidation of political power over spending decisions in party leadership, and the need to create an artificial crisis and take defense spending hostage to pass any end of year deal,” Greenwalt wrote on Jan. 10.
From there, the problem snowballs, according to Greenwalt. “These trends, incrementally increasing over time, are related and reinforce each other.”
When the appropriations bills aren’t passed on time, Congress has resorted to passing continuing resolutions, which carry the previous appropriations levels forward for a specified period of time, followed by omnibus appropriations bills, which bundle all appropriations for the year into one massive bill.
The previous Congress passed the $1.7 trillion Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, on Dec. 24, 2022.
Regular order, which means adhering more strictly to rules governing the function of committees, allowing time for debate, offering amendments, and the multiple votes required, takes time. Restoring that way of operating will be no simple matter, according to Greenwalt.
“Breaking this cycle will not be easy. It will require not only appropriators and authorizers to work together but for leadership to allow serious issues to be debated on the floor and a standalone defense appropriations bill to be passed into law and on time,” he wrote.
