House GOP leaders to start recess early after being forced to punt funding bill

House Republican leaders punted plans to pass an appropriations bill to fund agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to September amid internal discord about funding levels and policy gripes, canceling Friday floor votes and starting August recess a day early.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) announced on the House floor that votes would no longer be expected Friday.

“We will be finished for the August work period” after last votes Thursday afternoon, Scalise said.

The move to punt the bill comes as House conservatives have pressured GOP leaders to further slash the funding levels in the bill — and in other funding bills. Moderate lawmakers, meanwhile, have taken issue with a provision in the ag-FDA legislation that would limit access to an abortion pill.

Punting a bill sets up a September scramble to fund the government after the House returns from a six-week recess. The House is scheduled to be in session for just 12 days before a Sept. 30 funding deadline.

Senate appropriators are also marking up spending bills at levels higher than the House GOP is, laying the foundation for a clash between the two chambers in the fall.

Indications that the ag-FDA bill would be punted emerged Wednesday, when the House Rules Committee — which had been preparing the bill to come to the floor — did not come back to finish considering legislation Wednesday evening as negotiations between conservatives and leadership continued.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House GOP appropriators had already agreed to set overall top-line spending levels lower than the caps set out in the debt limit bill that McCarthy negotiated with President Biden. That infuriated Democrats, who pledge to vote against the House funding bills — leaving McCarthy in the difficult position of getting the slim GOP majority on board with the bills to pass them alone.

The House on Thursday passed its first appropriations bill to fund military construction and the Department of Veterans Affairs largely along party lines.

Another point of contention in the ag-FDA bill is a provision that would nullify a Biden administration rule allowing the abortion pill mifepristone to be sold in retail pharmacies and by mail with prescriptions from a certified health care provider.

Moderate Republicans have been vocal in their opposition to the provision, warning that they will not support the bill unless it is stripped. 

But one GOP lawmaker suggested those who object to the mifepristone measure are in no hurry to take it out because it gives them a reason to “delay the whole damn thing” amid disagreement with the Freedom Caucus members and other conservatives pushing for cuts.

“Freedom Caucus wants deeper cuts, we can’t possibly accept that,” the GOP lawmaker told The Hill.

House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.) tore into Republicans for delaying the vote and piling up spending bill votes in September, arguing that lawmakers should stay in Washington to strip out the “divisive” measures in the bills.

“Extremists are holding your conference hostage,” Clark said.

“This is a reckless march to a MAGA shutdown,” she added.