Far right balks as House pushes spending deal
Backlash from Freedom Caucus underscores speaker likely needs Dems to pass $1.6T bill
WASHINGTON — Congress on Monday began an uphill push to pass a new bipartisan spending agreement into law in time to avoid a partial government shutdown next week, with House Speaker Mike Johnson encountering stiff resistance from his far-right flank to the deal he struck with Democrats.
Ultraconservative House Republicans have panned the $1.66 trillion agreement Johnson made with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., saying it is unacceptable.
The agreement essentially hews to the bargain that Congress passed last year to suspend the debt ceiling, which the hard right opposed at the time and had hoped to scale back. It also includes $69 billion in spending that was added as a side deal, money that conservatives sought to block altogether.
“This is a total failure,” the far-right House Freedom Caucus, a group of Republicans who have proved a thorn in the side of a series of GOP speakers, wrote on social media.
“I am a NO to the Johnson Schumer budget deal,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote on social media. “This $1.6 Trillion dollar budget agreement does nothing to secure the border, stop the invasion or stop the weaponized government targeting Biden’s political enemies and innocent Americans.”
The backlash from the extreme right underscored anew that Johnson will most likely have to rely on substantial Democratic support to pass the spending bills underlying the agreement. It also raised questions about the viability of his plan to try to attract Republican backing to spending measures by inserting conservative policy dictates aimed at restricting abortion rights and what Republicans see as “woke” administration policies.
Democrats say they will fight the addition of such policy riders. If a large bloc of Republicans opposes the spending bills, the speaker will either need to drop the policy provisions to secure Democratic backing or face a shutdown.
“Democrats will not accept any Republican poison pill policy changes,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, declared in a statement.
The result is Johnson finds himself in a predicament similar to the one that led to the ouster of Kevin McCarthy last fall — overseeing a minuscule majority while facing a potential government shutdown and having to cut a deal with Democrats that is certain to draw opposition from the far right.