House Republicans push to add controversial riders to annual spending bills

House Republicans are focusing their gaze on securing partisan policy changes that Democrats are decrying as nonstarters as a fight over government funding heats up on Capitol Hill.  

Both chambers are ramping up talks on the 12 annual government funding bills after top negotiators struck a bipartisan deal on how to divvy up dollars for the full-year appropriations measures. 

But Republicans say they still plan to push for the conservative policy riders they pursued in their earlier partisan spending proposals — which Democrats see as a non-starter for spending talks. 

“If there were going to be sticking points, it’s probably going to be over the riders,” said Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), the head of the subcommittee that hashes out full-year spending for Department of Energy, after huddling with other chairs and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) this week. 

“We just talked about trying to get as many as possible,” Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), the spending cardinal for the subcommittee that crafts funding for the departments of Labor and Health and Human Services, said after the huddle.  

Johnson earlier this month brokered a deal with Senate Democrats on top-line funding levels for fiscal 2024, allowing appropriators to begin bicameral negotiations. However, Johnson has also said the party will fight to keep its party riders in the bill. 

The riders Republicans have pursued include measures targeting diversity initiatives and abortion access. 

In remarks to reporters this week, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said Democrats are “not going to accept riders.” 

“Our leader has said that and I’ve said that and that’s where we are,” she said. She also noted the difficulty Republicans faced in passing some of their partisan funding bills last year.

“Those cuts are still there,” she said. “So we have to turn it around, keeping in mind that they weren’t able to pass an agriculture bill because of the cuts. Democrats and Republicans said no. Four bills pulled from the floor because Democrats or Republicans said no.” 

House Republicans had ambitious goals to individually pass all their partisan funding bills last year, but leadership struggled to unify the conference around the measures while navigating a razor-thin majority and divides over spending and abortion.  

Congress, after passing three stopgap funding bills, has less than five weeks until it runs up on the first of two funding deadlines in early March to prevent a partial government shutdown.  

Some spending cardinals say they are confident in Congress’s chances to avert a funding lapse, but staunch conservative resistance to Johnson’s spending deal could create headaches for GOP leadership if more Democratic support is necessary to get the bills across the finish line. 

House conservatives have repeatedly tanked procedural votes in recent months to put pressure on leadership for steeper spending cuts, despite pushback from other factions of the conference.

Some appropriators have already raised the prospect of using workarounds, like suspension rules, that would allow them to bring up funding legislation despite efforts by conservatives to block consideration. But Democrats could wind up with more leverage as a result. 

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who heads the spending subcommittee that assembles the housing and transportation funding bill, said Tuesday he thinks Democrats could strengthen their hand if the House needs to suspend the rules to pass appropriations measures in the week ahead.  

While that would allow the House to bring up legislation without having to do a procedural vote first, it would also require two-thirds of the chamber’s support for passage, instead of the usual simple majority threshold. 

“We have to have a compromise anyway to get anything across the floor. So I think on some things, we could make it work. But it’s not the ideal way to operate,” Cole told reporters Tuesday when asked about the strategy GOP leadership has had to employ in recent weeks. “Through the majority, you need to control the floor.” 

“It certainly would raise the stakes, suspension bills have to pass with two-thirds,” said Rep. Sanford Bishop Jr. (Ga.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration. 

While he said doesn’t know if would impact Democrats’ leverage in talks, he added such a move would mean “that Democrats will have to be involved.” 

But House Republicans say that doesn’t mean Democrats won’t end up coming to the table on riders as spending talks pick up. 

“We’re going to have to deal with those issues,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), who heads the subcommittee that oversees funding for the State Department and other agencies, said this week.  

“The advantage is that we passed some of these bills and so we show that we have some votes and have some support,” he said. “The disadvantage is that we’re down to a majority of, what one?” 

“And the visual that we can’t even pass rules on, you know, basic things does not help our leverage or the Speaker’s leverage. Having said that, we have an opportunity to negotiate,” he added. 

At the same time, some House GOP appropriators also say they’ve begun to identify potential changes that could find bipartisan support in spending talks. That includes what Fleischmann described to reporters this week as a “bipartisan and bicameral coalescing” around electric transformers. 

Diaz-Balart also pointed to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, as another area for common ground in talks. 

“You see now that the White House has discovered the Pacific Ocean … they’re now freezing their funds to UNRWA. Duh,” Diaz-Balart said, while pointing to language he’s pressed for that seeks stricter reporting requirements to unlock funding for UNWRA. 

“But we’ll see what happens when we go to negotiate,” he said.  

Laura Kelly contributed.