A prominent member of the House Freedom Caucus is predicting that his Republican colleagues will wind up having to swallow a massive \u2018omnibus\u2019 spending bill to fund the government in fiscal year 2024.<\/p>\n
Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., an outgoing House lawmaker who has served since 2015, said the House GOP will likely fall short of its goal to pass 12 individual appropriations bills to fund the government, citing the pervasive fractures within the conference.<\/p>\n
\u2018I don\u2019t think that we have the votes in the House to either adopt conservative policies because the moderates will vote against it, or the spending levels that the moderates want, because the conservatives will vote against it,\u2019 Buck told Fox News Digital.<\/p>\n
\u2018So we\u2019re still stuck, and the leadership needs \u2014 and I think they\u2019ve shown this a few times now \u2014 needs Democrat votes to get spending bills passed, and that\u2019s going to require either a couple of minibuses or an omnibus at some point next year.\u2019<\/p>\n
Buck was one of eight House Republicans who voted to oust ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., over his handling of the government funding debate.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Asked whether Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is doing better, Buck argued that Johnson\u2019s recently passed continuing resolution (CR) \u2014 which extends last year\u2019s government funding levels for a short time \u2014 is still at a lower topline number than that set by the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) deal struck by McCarthy and President Biden.<\/p>\n
\u2018The clean CR is at a lower level than the FRA numbers. So in my mind, you know, if we end up with a CR for 2024, it\u2019s not ideal, but it\u2019s a better number than if we had the deal that McCarthy cooked,\u2019 Buck said.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019ve heard some members talk about, you know, \u2018This will be the third strike\u2019 or whatever. I just think that Kevin had a long history with people that came to a head. Mike is doing the right things, trying to keep government open, and working with the numbers the best he can, and I think people understand that he is acting with good intentions,\u2019 he explained when asked if Johnson\u2019s job would be in peril if he similarly dissatisfied GOP lawmakers.<\/p>\n
Current government funding runs out on two deadlines, thanks to a two-tiered stopgap funding bill passed by Congress last month. Appropriations bills concerning military construction and Veterans Affairs; Agriculture; Energy and Water; Transportation; and Housing and Urban Development have to be dealt with by Jan. 19, while the remaining eight appropriations bills must be worked out by Feb. 2.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018I think it\u2019s better than jamming us on Christmas Day with bills that, you know, have to get passed. So I think it\u2019s a more rational time frame,\u2019 Buck said. \u2018But I still don\u2019t think we have the votes to pass the kind of numbers that we want, with the kind of policies that we want.\u2019<\/p>\n
Fox News Digital has reached out to Johnson\u2019s office for comment.<\/p>\n\n
A prominent member of the House Freedom Caucus is predicting that his Republican colleagues will wind up having to swallow a massive \u2018omnibus\u2019 spending bill to fund the government in fiscal year 2024. Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., an outgoing House lawmaker who has served since 2015, said the House GOP will likely fall short of <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12427,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12426","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\/12426","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=12426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}