The House Appropriations Committee made it official this week, moving forward with massive funding cuts, giving in to the 11 Republicans in and allied with the Freedom Caucus, and reneging on the budget agreement House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made with President Joe Biden. They set a spending cap that’s $119 billion less than what was agreed to in that debt ceiling deal, and about $130 billion less than current funding.
That means funding cuts from one-quarter to one-third to everything but defense, military, and VA construction, as well as homeland security, which the Republicans exempted from cuts. In typical vengeful fashion, they are proposing a 59% cut in the financial services appropriations bill, which funds the Treasury, the Executive Office of the President, the judiciary, the District of Columbia, and a few dozen independent agencies.
The proposal Republicans put forward wouldn’t only cut next years’ funding: It would also claw back $115 billion that has already been enacted for a variety of departments and agencies, including the EPA, Department of Agriculture, and the IRS. That money would be plowed into restarting the ridiculous border wall project and other border security measures, as well as “fending off Chinese aggression.”
Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blasted Republicans for letting the 11 members run the show, and for setting the stage for what looks to be an inevitable government shutdown. “Why did we try avoiding a default to make sure that America pays its bills with a topline spending agreement? What was it all for? Because now all we're engaging in is right-wing theater designed to jam extreme, painful cuts down the throats of the American people. And Democrats will not let it happen.”
For the extremists who are controlling the Republicans, “shutting down the government is in their DNA,” he said Thursday. “They don't care about government. And so what we see right now, taking place in the appropriations process, is perhaps an effort by some extreme MAGA Republicans to drive us toward a government shutdown,” Jeffries told reporters. “And that's a shame.”
Just to rub Democrats’ noses in these ridiculous cuts, the Republicans also screwed Democrats on earmarks, the district-specific funding requests individual members make. Republicans made fewer requests than Democrats, but are getting almost three times as much funding approved. In like-for-like comparisons, a fire station project in a Republican district in Ohio is getting $2.25 million, while one in a Democrat’s district in Massachusetts is getting $1 million. A library improvement project in a Republican district in Pennsylvania is getting $5 million, while one in Democratic New Hampshire is just getting $1 million.
In the set of earmarks for the Homeland Security appropriation bill, Republican Congressman Trent Kelly of Mississippi got $3 million for a DeSoto County Operations Center project, while Democratic Congressman Andy Kim of New Jersey got only $637,195 for a similar project in his district. In Michigan, an earmark to replace lead service lines in St. Charles, Michigan, represented by Democratic Congressman Dan Kildee, got $1 million, but a water infrastructure improvements project in Indiantown, Florida, in Republican Congressman Brian Mast’s district, got $3 million.
These kind of snubs toward Democrats are only going to make it harder for McCarthy to avoid a shutdown. Democrats will not be willing to help him or Republicans out at all, and will be happy to let him own the shutdown when the Senate refuses to go along with the extremists’ tantrum.
Even Republicans on the Senate side reject the House antics. They are working with the majority Democrats to abide by the funding agreement in the debt ceiling deal. “It’s going to be a problem,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, an Appropriations Committee Republican, told The Hill. [W]e struck an agreement that will write to those numbers.”
“I think there’s an incentive for both sides to try and get to a deal even though it’s going to be really hard,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota about the process of agreeing to funding on the Senate side. “Moving bills here is hard enough. It’s going to be really challenging I think in the House.”
That’s muted criticism of their Republican House colleagues, but it betrays a well-founded worry that they’re going to be dragged along into a shutdown. The Republicans could easily take the Senate back in 2024, with a very tough map for Democrats. They are watching an out-of-control House sabotage that effort.
The clear answer for the majority of Republicans who don’t want to be swept up in this chaos is to forcefully reject it. They have the numbers to tell the extremists to pound sand, and to force McCarthy to make concessions to them—when pigs fly.
There have been sooo many hot takes about the 2022 midterms, which is why we're joined on this week's episode of "The Downballot" by Michael Frias and Hillary Anderson of the progressive data firm Catalist to discuss their data-intensive report on what actually happened. They explain how they marry precinct-level election results with detailed voter files to go far beyond what the polls can tell us. Among the findings: Highly competitive races were much more favorable to Democrats than less-contested ones; Republicans paid a "MAGA tax" by nominating extreme candidates; and non-college-educated white women shifted toward Democrats by notable margins compared to 2020.