Several conservatives told Fox News Digital on Wednesday that they don\u2019t expect any votes on the House\u2019s remaining appropriations bills until the new year \u2014\u00a0a move they\u2019re concerned will cost Republicans valuable time in negotiations.<\/p>\n
\u2018I guess we\u2019ll take it up in January. We punted. I hate that we did it the way we did it,\u2019 Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., a member of the hardline-right House Freedom Caucus, told Fox News Digital. \u2018This body is good \u2014 Republicans and Democrats are good at spending taxpayers\u2019 money, and they\u2019re not good at cutting anything.\u2019<\/p>\n
Lawmakers returned on Tuesday from a Thanksgiving break and will recess again until January on Dec. 15.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Just before leaving, Congress passed a temporary extension of last year\u2019s government funding levels, but with two separate deadlines: passing appropriations bills concerning military construction and Veterans Affairs; Agriculture; Energy and Water; Transportation; and Housing and Urban Development by Jan. 19, while the remaining eight appropriations bills must be worked out by Feb. 2. \u00a0<\/p>\n
While the measure, known as a continuing resolution (CR), allowed Congress to avoid a government shutdown over the holidays, Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital he believed it also dampened the urgency for Congress to make a deal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018All we\u2019ve done with these two CRs is kick the can down the road. We still have a tough road ahead of us. We\u2019ve got to get on with our business,\u2019 Self said. \u2018We took the pressure off with the CRs. This town needs a deadline. When you moved the deadline out, it takes pressure off. This town responds to pressure. Otherwise, we\u2019re happy to just let things go.\u2019<\/p>\n
He said the House should be \u2018pushing hard\u2019 on its remaining spending bills or \u2018sitting down with the Senate daily\u2019 to discuss a deal.<\/p>\n
The House has passed seven of 12 individual appropriations bills it has pledged to fund the government in the next fiscal year. Before that, the Senate passed its own three spending bills in a joint \u2018minibus\u2019 and is potentially weighing a similar effort with the other nine.<\/p>\n
\u2018We need to start discussing this stuff. You know, we\u2019re following that same old trap where we get down, and then leadership comes from on high and tells us what we\u2019re going to do,\u2019 Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., told Fox News Digital. \u2018I would hope they start listening to us on some of these spending measures.\u2019<\/p>\n
But the government funding fight has been fraught with intra-GOP divisions for months. Before the CR passed, House leaders were forced to pull spending bills from the vote schedule multiple times over objections from both moderates and conservatives.<\/p>\n
One senior GOP aide said those disagreements were the reason for the apparent slowdown.<\/p>\n
\u2018I think people are worn out. I think they have to discuss behind the scenes if we can un-jam any of the ones that we have that are jammed up,\u2019 the aide told Fox News Digital. \u2018We threw everything at the wall trying to get these appropriations bills passed. We couldn\u2019t. So I just don\u2019t think there\u2019s going to be a breakthrough at the moment.\u2019<\/p>\n
A GOP lawmaker who spoke with Fox News Digital said conversations between the top appropriators in the House and Senate were \u2018ongoing\u2019 and downplayed the public delay.<\/p>\n
\u2018I don\u2019t know that there\u2019s a clear benefit to moving them at this point. I mean, the rules of the House indicate that our official negotiating position can be set when something\u2019s passed out of appropriations or passed out of the rules\u2026 We\u2019ve got our marching orders for all 12 bills, we\u2019re in a position to be able to negotiate with the Senate, we should go negotiate with Senate,\u2019 the lawmaker said.<\/p>\n\n
Several conservatives told Fox News Digital on Wednesday that they don\u2019t expect any votes on the House\u2019s remaining appropriations bills until the new year \u2014\u00a0a move they\u2019re concerned will cost Republicans valuable time in negotiations. \u2018I guess we\u2019ll take it up in January. We punted. I hate that we did it the way we did <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12259,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12258","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}