Even though Donald Trump’s victory handed control of both chambers of Congress and the White House to Republicans, intra-party divisions are already bubbling up over how to fund the government in the lame-duck session.
House and Senate GOP leaders are trying to hash out their differences, GOP aides told the Examiner, but may still be at odds over the best strategy to keep the government funded and running into the New Year.
The Republican leaders plan to hash out an exact plan early next week, but some fissures were evident heading into those discussions.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., along with an emboldened conservative House Freedom Caucus, want their leaders to avoid working with President Obama to develop an omnibus spending package that would inevitably include extraneous bills and items.
Instead, they want to clear the deck for Trump and back a clean continuing resolution that would keep the government running at current levels until March so Trump has time to develop his own budget and spending priorities. The strategy would also serve to separate the spending fight from another on the debt ceiling hike early next year.
The signs of division came earlier this week when Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., expressed a desire to negotiate a massive, end-of-the-year bill with Obama to fund the rest of the fiscal year — until Sept. 30, 2017.
“We would like to finish funding the government this year,” McConnell told reporters the day after the election. “Exactly how to achieve that over a three-week period is always a matter for discussion — how to package it, differences in the House versus the Senate. But I would like to wrap up the business of funding the government in this fiscal year, this calendar year.”
Asked if McConnell’s position had changed in the days since he made those remarks, his spokesman simply referred to his Wednesday comments.
Freedom Caucus members and conservative outside groups are flat-out rejecting any move toward an omnibus spending bill.
“I think most of us would prefer a CR that runs into next year,” House Freedom Caucus member Dave Brat, R-Va., told Politico late this week, as long as it’s a clean bill and “not a crap sandwich.”
“If it’s a crap sandwich with extra portions, I’ll doubt we’ll be in favor of it,” he added.
“They should pass the CR, and that’s all they should do in the lame duck — nothing more. Go home,” Richard Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government, told the Washington Examiner.
“This Republican Congress needs to agree with the American public and those states that sided with Donald Trump and his 290 electoral votes and say we’re going to end the Obama administration on Jan. 20, we’re not going to extend it through Sept. 30, 2017,” he said.
Pursuing any other legislative priorities, other than keeping the government funded, would be a “slap in the face to those voters,” he added.
Citizens for the Republic, a conservative nonprofit, issued an open letter to Congress Friday titled “Make Appropriations Great Again — No More Concessions to President Obama’s agenda.”
“As many begin to murmur of an omnibus bill, Congress must resist any calls for such legislation,” the group said, instead calling on Congress to pass a short-term continuing resolution funding the government through early next year.
“We need a clean, short-term continuing resolution to last through the current administration,” said Diana Banister, the group’s executive director. “We now have a chance to return to regular order and a real appropriations process. Congress should not concede to President Obama’s demands.”
The group pressed Republicans in Congress not to give in to “voices of the establishment” who have shown a willingness to cave to some of Obama’s top priroities in the past, including support for “millions of dollars in tax credits” to the solar industry.
“Groups like SolarCity run by Elon Musk have received nearly $5 billion from these subsidies and have next to nothing to show for it,” CFR said.
Elon Musk is the founder and CEO of SpaceX and the product architect of Tesla Motors.
