House Republicans plowed ahead Tuesday with a short-term government funding package that one leading Democratic lawmaker denounced as “a ploy to force the extreme Project 2025 manifesto agenda on the American people.”
The GOP’s stopgap continuing resolution, to which House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) attached a widely condemned voter suppression bill, would mostly fund the federal government at current levels for six months beyond the looming shutdown date of September 30, putting off the spending fight until after the 2024 elections.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said Monday that instead of negotiating a bipartisan solution to the impasse over government funding, House Republicans “squandered an entire year by taking us down a partisan path and forcing us to waste time considering extreme funding bills based on [Republican presidential nominee Donald] Trump’s Project 2025 they could not pass and that have no chance of becoming law.”
DeLauro warned that instead of approving bipartisan government funding legislation ahead of the November elections, much of the House Republican caucus wants to delay negotiations until early next year, believing such a strategy “provides them with more leverage to force their unpopular cuts to services that American families depend on to make ends meet.”
“They want to slash domestic investments in healthcare, education, job training, and every other discretionary program, which will hurt the middle class and the economy,” said DeLauro. “This bill is an admission that a House Republican majority cannot govern. They would rather gamble on an intervening election than attempt to complete their work on time.”
The GOP’s legislative package narrowly cleared a procedural hurdle on Tuesday and is set for a final vote on Wednesday, but the legislation is likely doomed to fail amid united opposition from congressional Democrats and the White House and fractures in the Republican caucus.
As The New York Times reported Tuesday, “Democrats and many Republicans prefer a shorter-term spending bill that would last into early December, allowing time to resolve their fiscal differences but leaving it to Mr. Biden and the current Congress — rather than the next president and Congress — to set funding levels for 2025 and beyond.”
A detailed analysis released last week by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that budget proposals released by House Republicans combined with the far-right policy changes outlined under the Project 2025 agenda — including steep cuts to critical social programs — would “create a harsher country with higher poverty and less opportunity.”
In a letter to his caucus on Monday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) wrote that “despite the existence of a previously agreed upon spending framework, extreme MAGA Republicans have decided to abandon their commitment to the American people in order to enact Trump’s Project 2025 agenda.”
“The partisan and extreme continuing resolution put forth by House Republicans is unserious and unacceptable,” Jeffries continued. “In order to avert a GOP-driven government shutdown that will hurt everyday Americans, Congress must pass a short-term continuing resolution that will permit us to complete the appropriations process during this calendar year and is free of partisan policy changes inspired by Trump’s Project 2025.”
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