Debt limit deal sets off new spending fights

New spending limits created by the recently passed debt ceiling deal are already fueling divisions across party lines — and among factions of the House GOP.

Shortly after House members returned to Washington this week, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) rejected pressure from some Senate Republicans upset about curbing defense funding through the deal reached with President Biden.

“This is the beef I have,” McCarthy said to reporters on Tuesday. “We just came to an agreement, and the first thing I hear over there, ‘I don’t want to vote for it. We need to supplemental,'” the speaker said, referring to a stand-alone bill to boost defense spending.

Asked about a Pentagon supplemental funding bill, McCarthy said: “Why would they start with that? … You’ve got [Sen.] Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and his only answer is more money for defense.”

His comments arrive on the heels of criticism leveled by some Senate Republicans, who have balked at defense levels set as part of the bipartisan bill, dubbed the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

The bill suspended the debt ceiling until 2025 to prevent a federal default in exchange for setting new limits on government funding and other measures to repeal previously allocated money.

Some Republicans have lauded reforms in the bill they say would allow for a significant cut to federal spending.

But Republican defense hawks have railed against the bill for including a penalty of automatic across-the-board cuts if lawmakers don’t finish their annual spending bills by the end of the calendar year.

Lawmakers haven’t met their annual funding deadline since 1997.

The bill passed the Senate late Thursday, but not until leaders from both sides of the Senate issued a joint statement into the congressional record clarifying the proposed caps would not block lawmakers from passing supplemental funding for defense in the event of an emergency.  

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told The Hill that if lawmakers were on track to fail to pass annual funding bills in time — which would trigger automatic cuts — leaders envisioned “passing an emergency defense appropriation bill to help the Department of Defense.”

“I think that’s at the heart of it and a good faith effort to bring all appropriation bills to the floor,” Durbin said.

Even so, some conservatives are already coming out against the idea of a supplemental funding bill for defense.

“I mean, the senators believe that it’s too aggressive. Well, that’s great news,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) said Tuesday of the spending cuts in the debt limit deal.

“I wish we could have pushed further. But the idea that they’re bristling at the caps that did pass says well, we might have got as much as we could achieve.”

Davidson, a former Army Ranger, also took aim at what he called “neoconservatives, which is a fancy word for not conservative, that want to find more wars in more places,” specifically naming Graham.

Other conservatives have also pressed for GOP leadership to hold the line, while raising concerns about opening the door to further spending outside the levels set in the recent bill. 

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) said entertaining a supplemental funding bill “will cause a lot of other issues.”

Some Democrats have already signaled they’re prepared to pry open the door to more funding for domestic programs pared back in the debt bill if Republicans do so for defense funds.

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said ahead of the bill’s passage that she was determined to “lessen the damage of these cuts at every possible opportunity,” which could include “working with the administration and my colleagues to consider a supplemental.”

“But that conversation has to consider more than just Defense and Ukraine because there are so many important priorities like border security, disaster relief, and other nondefense items that we should not let be shortchanged,” Murray said. 

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, struck a similar note Tuesday while discussing if lawmakers look to a supplemental funding measure “would increase overall defense spending.”

“Unless there is a willingness to increase domestic spending at the same time, you know, we’ll just see,” she added. 

As for now, Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), ranking member of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, told The Hill on Tuesday that spending levels in the forthcoming defense funding bill will be in line with the recently passed debt limit bill. 

“The Senate is the Senate. All I know, here in the house, we’re gonna pass the bill we have,” he said, “and we’re going to try to do it as soon as possible.”

Emily Brooks, Nathaniel Weixel and Mike Lillis contributed.