A bill that would cut funding for the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies cleared the House of Representatives late Thursday night, with Republicans in favor and Democrats mostly opposed.
The fiscal 2017 financial services appropriations bill would cut $236 million from the IRS budget, part of a Republican effort to crack down on the agency. It also contains a host of policy riders that affect many aspects of financial regulation and fiscal policy, enough to draw a veto threat from the White House, which also opposes the included spending cuts.
The measure passed 239-185, with a handful of members of each party crossing the aisle.
Hal Rogers, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said after the bill’s passage that part of its purpose was to “tightly hold the reins on the over-spending and overreach within federal bureaucracies.”
Added to the legislation Thursday was an amendment, authored by Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., that would prevent the Financial Stability Oversight Council from labeling any more non-bank financial firms “systemically important” and regulating them like big banks, a designation that Republicans say amounts to an admission that the firms are too-big-to-fail.
A number of other amendments placing policy “riders” on the spending bill were considered. One that failed was a measure offered by Reps. Ken Buck of Colorado and Mark Sanford of South Carolina to cut the salary of the IRS commissioner to zero.
The bill is one of 12 appropriations bills that would be passed by the House and Senate in the annual budget process to fund the government. That process, however, has stalled in recent weeks, making it more likely that the government could be funded through an all-in-one spending bill at the end of the fiscal year.
