For years, conservatives have correctly warned that the federal government is too big, too expensive, and too ideologically captured. Yet conviction without legislative follow-through leaves the bureaucracy untouched. Winning elections is essential — but governing requires showing up to legislate.
That work is now underway. In preparation for the fiscal 2027 appropriations process, I sent a letter to House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) proposing that House Republicans enact significant funding cuts and precise numbers in line with the president’s budget request, and conservative statutory policy riders crafted to survive conference. Spanning all 12 appropriations bills, conservatives must outline exactly what fiscal 2027 conservative governance should look like.
Recommended Stories
We must draw a clear line between members who want to govern and those who are just content to talk about it.
OPINION: THE BIDEN RULE CONGRESS HAS A RARE OPPORTUNITY TO KILL
Republicans now hold the House, Senate, and White House — a rare trifecta carrying a clear mandate to cut spending, reform entitlements, and restrain the administrative state. We must ensure that promises are incorporated into actionable legislation.
There is a profound difference between a political demand and a legislative instrument. Vague goals disappear. Statutory language written into appropriations bills becomes law. It is harder to negotiate away in conference, survives changes in administration, and carries the force of law for the full fiscal year. Repeat it annually, and it systematically dismantles entrenched progressive priorities. Democrats mastered this tactic for decades. It’s finally time for Republicans to catch up.
Real conservative governance means that we must secure enactment of provisions that include, but are not limited to, the following:
Defunding the abortion travel rule: Prohibit any Defense Department funds from implementing the Biden-era policy of facilitating abortion travel for service members. Taxpayers, including millions of pro-life Americans, will no longer subsidize it.
Eliminating the American Climate Corps: This Green New Deal program in uniform must receive zero dollars.
Cutting the Environmental Protection Agency by $4.6 billion: Rein in an agency that weaponized regulations against fossil fuels, power plants, and American industry, while explicitly blocking Green New Deal-style rules. Farmers, manufacturers, and energy consumers stand to benefit.
Closing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program loophole: Broad-based categorical eligibility allowed states to bypass income tests and turn SNAP into a de facto universal subsidy. We must restore accountability to SNAP.
Blocking a Central Bank Digital Currency: The Treasury Department must be barred from using any funds to test, develop, or implement a CBDC.
Protecting Second Amendment rights: No taxpayer funds should be used to enforce Biden-era Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regulations, create a national gun registry, or support an ATF-Drug Enforcement Agency merger. Unobligated funds for a new FBI headquarters must also be rescinded.
Securing the border in statute: H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act of 2023, must be incorporated into base appropriations text, tightening asylum standards, ending parole abuse, and codifying key executive actions.
The modern administrative state was not built primarily through landmark bills. It was constructed quietly — one appropriations rider, one funding floor, one prohibition at a time. Democrats used must-pass spending bills to protect Planned Parenthood, embed diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates, fund progressive international organizations, and expand programs such as the Climate Corps and SNAP. Republicans too often accepted these as baseline in omnibus deals.
That approach is changing. Instead of waiting for a finished product from committee, we must proactively provide statutory language and demand regular order. When bills move individually through committee and the floor, members gain leverage to offer amendments, negotiate, and force votes on conservative priorities.
Conservatives who dismiss appropriations as “inside baseball” are ceding the battlefield to those who built the very system they decry. The Left has never skipped an appropriations cycle. Republicans cannot afford to either.
The American people entrusted Republicans with unified government to cut spending, secure the border, and restore constitutional order. This majority is temporary. The window to deliver is now. The fiscal 2027 appropriations bills are where those promises become law — or quietly die.
Deliver the bills. Hold the line on spending. Include the riders. Use the power of the purse as it was intended.
This is what winning looks like. Don’t waste it.
Keith Self is a Republican U.S. congressman who represents Texas’s 3rd District and is a House Freedom Caucus member.
