Amid GOP rift, House fails to pass budget

Tea party faction, Republican leaders remain at odds.

WASHINGTON — House Republicans departed Washington on Friday having missed a deadline to pass their long-stalled budget despite the embarrassment for the party and its new House Speaker Paul Ryan, who had pledged to get the process back on track.

Continuing divisions between tea party lawmakers and House GOP leaders also shelved an effort to address an economic crisis in Puerto Rico, and the White House is amping up the pressure over delays in providing money it has requested to combat the Zika virus.

Even without a budget, the House and Senate Appropriations committees are commencing work on spending bills. But trouble awaits on the House floor, where only a handful of the measures seem sure to advance — threatening the sort of budgetary deadlocks that have characterized the last several years.

The current budget fight has its roots in last year’s bipartisan budget deal with President Barack Obama, which required Democratic votes to pass and added more than $100 billion over two years to agency coffers hit by automatic budget curbs known in Washington-speak as sequestration.

Many conservatives opposed the additional spending and are refusing to vote for a leadership-driven budget plan that endorses it. The GOP fiscal blueprint also recommends record spending cuts to meet its target of a balanced budget within 10 years, which means Democrats won’t vote for it even though it endorses higher agency budgets for the upcoming fiscal year.

“The Ryan budget that has been proposed is the most devastating road-to-ruin budget in history,” said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. “And even that wasn’t brutal enough for the radical forces that have taken control and dominate the House Republican caucus.”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on Friday he’s holding out hope for getting the budget to the floor, but didn’t seem very confident. Ryan on Thursday appeared ready to all but give up on this year’s budget drive.

“Part of the problem is we’re a victim of the success of the fact that we have appropriation numbers already in law,” Ryan explained. “We already have an agreement in law and that has taken pressure off of the budget situation.”

“The only thing worse than not doing a budget is spending more money,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a leader of the tea party coalition.

The dirty secret is that failing to pass a budget has few real-world consequences for lawmakers, and GOP leaders in both the House and Senate are instead moving ahead with the annual spending bills that determine agency operating budgets.

But that process could fall prey to a similar set of House fights. Democrats are likely to oppose many of the bills if they’re laced with conservative policies, while conservatives have problems with spending levels.