GOP budget chair floats attaching debt commission to government funding bills  

House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) on Wednesday floated using annual government funding bills to advance a legislative effort for a special commission tasked with addressing the nation’s growing debt. 

Arrington raised the prospect Wednesday shortly after his committee held a hearing focused on the need for a fiscal commission, calling potential appropriations legislation that could move in January or February a “likely vehicle.” 

Lawmakers avoided a shutdown before the Thanksgiving recess earlier this month after agreeing to keep funding frozen at levels last hashed out in the previous Congress to buy time for a larger deal on how the government should be funded through most of next year. 

As part of the compromise, lawmakers set up two deadlines temporarily extending funding for certain agencies through mid-January and early February to avoid having to pass an omnibus package combining all 12 annual funding bills.  

“It seems more realistic to work through regular order, reach across the aisle to bring our Democrat colleagues along, and there’s already bipartisan solutions, and to be prepared to attach it to one of our funding bills,” Arrington said. “It makes sense.” 

But there is much uncertainty as to whether Congress will finish its annual funding legislation in time, as negotiators have pointed to a lack of an overall top line on spending between both chambers as a key holdup.  

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) suggested earlier this week that a fiscal commission may also “satisfy some members of the House that we can go ahead and do appropriation bills” as well as some of his colleagues in the Senate. 

“If that’s something that is satisfying to House members that they’re [heading] on a path toward greater fiscal responsibility, that’s a good thing,” Moran said. “I mean, we ought to be on a different path than we’re on for fiscal responsibility.” 

His comments come as some hard-line conservatives have also been dialing up the pressure on GOP leadership for the idea, all the while pushing the conference to take a more aggressive stance on cutting spending beyond a budget caps deal struck between former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and President Biden earlier this year. 

However, the push for a commission has been met with distrust from some Democrats, including Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who said he was “deeply skeptical” of the idea in the Wednesday hearing.

“My fear is that a commission would [be used] by some as an excuse to slash Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other federal anti-poverty programs,” McGovern said, arguing lawmakers “shouldn’t pass the buck to a fiscal commission to do the work that we ourselves don’t want to do.” 

“There already is a bipartisan forum where these kinds of decisions should get made. It’s called Congress,” he said. 

Lawmakers also debated the effectiveness of commissions while pointing to Congress’s previous track record on the matter, as proponents argued the effort could be a means to overcome partisan gridlock to find common ground.