The House had to punt the agriculture and Food and Drug Administration appropriations bill to after the August recess as several hard-line conservative members and centrist Republican members expressed their displeasure with certain provisions, teeing up a fight to fund the government ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline.
Leadership had hoped to vote the bill off of the floor on Friday, but those hopes never materialized. The Rules Committee had started hearing the bill on Wednesday but had to adjourn amid pushback from the right flank and centrist wings of the party.
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This led to the House adjourning for August recess one day early on Thursday, having only passed one appropriation bill off the floor. Now when the House returns in September, it will be left to deal with eleven appropriations bills before the Sep. 30 deadline.
A main worry of the House Freedom Caucus is that the bill does not do enough to cut spending despite it being below fiscal 2022 levels.
“It concerns that the bill is not eliminating as much wasteful spending as it could,” said Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA), a Freedom Caucus member. “And we’ve identified additional areas and provided suggestions where those savings can be found.”
Cline expressed that a big concern is the $7.5 billion in rescission and whether or not the savings from the rescission are used for deficit reduction or if they’re “re-spent on additional priorities.”
“Across all 12 appropriations bills, the rescissions are spent, and the Freedom Caucus would prefer that they be savings to the taxpayer,” he said.
A rescission is the clawing back of already authorized funds that have gone unused.
Another thing Freedom Caucus members want to see in the agriculture appropriations bill is work requirements for SNAP. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) said he believes they should set a 20-hour-a-week work requirement in the bill, which would, in turn, save money.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), another Freedom Caucus member, said they “need to see cuts on any of the additional measures coming forward” in order to get down to the $1.471 trillion spending level they have been talking about.
But members in rural and farm-heavy districts balk at the idea of cutting additional spending in the agriculture bill.
“I think the cuts are gonna be devastating,” said Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-IA). “I look at the export, and we do a tremendous amount of export in the Midwest; we’re the breadbasket to the world, and this is a grave concern to me.”
His fellow Iowa delegation member, freshman Rep. Zach Nunn (R-IA), expressed the same sentiment.
While Nunn said he is all for cutting spending and believes the federal government should rein in excessive spending, he questioned whether the agriculture appropriations bill was the proper place to do that.
“The spirit of balancing our budget is something we should always have at the forefront of every farmer’s checkbook as well as every family’s. But the reality is, no farmer in the world would just start cutting their budget to try and meet a bottom line if it was going to destroy their entire business model,” Nunn said.
He explained that the cuts being proposed to the bill are being proposed by “a select sliver of individuals” who are going after a “small sliver” of the overall federal budget. And by cutting spending on agricultural innovation, it won’t actually achieve a positive outcome.
“They’re not going to balance the budget based on these cuts. If anything, they’re going to do a lot more damage,” he said.
But on top of concerns surrounding the cuts, other members have grave concerns about the abortion restrictions laid out in the agriculture appropriations bill. In the bill, there is a provision that would reverse the Food and Drug Administration’s guidance allowing the abortion pill mifepristone to be sent by mail and purchased at retail pharmacies.
Many centrists take issue with this provision and are digging in, saying they won’t support this provision and believe it doesn’t belong in the agriculture appropriations bill.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), co-chair of the Bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, said the provision “should not” be in the agriculture bill because “it’s not ag.” He said he would support a Democratic amendment to strip the provision out of the bill. But he emphasized that the bill is not at the finish line yet and can still be worked on.
Another centrist Republican, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), also takes issue with the abortion provision in the agriculture bill, saying it is a “concern” for him.
But Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) does not seem likely to remove the provision from the bill. When asked at a press conference about whether or not he would agree to strip that section out of the bill, he said, “Regardless of how you feel on this position, you shouldn’t use taxpayer money for it.”
All this sets up for an appropriations battle come September, as the government is set to shut down on Oct. 1 if it is not funded.
And with only one appropriations bill off the floor, the House will have to work hard to make more progress on its first week back.
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One senior GOP lawmaker told the Washington Examiner that if both the House and the Senate could get a couple more appropriations bills off the floor, such as the Department of Defense funding bill and two or three more, in the first few weeks of September, that could be enough to go to conference with the Senate and then wrap those bills into a minibus — a group of appropriations bills voted on together. Then they could pass that along with a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government funded while the House and Senate work out the other appropriations bills.
Members of the Freedom Caucus said earlier this week they would not support a minibus or a continuing resolution. If House leadership takes this route, they would need support from Democrats to get it across the finish line.
