Feehery: Power of the purse

When Queen Elizabeth came to the House of Representatives several years ago, she stepped on the straps of her purse that she laid on the floor as she addressed a joint meeting of Congress. She seemed worried that some rapacious congressman might walk away with her purse and all of its contents. 

For a legislative branch that is notorious for spending its way to financial ruin, this was probably wise.

The power of the purse will become a recurring and important theme for the Congress this year. In a historic first, the four people most intimately involved in producing the spending bills for Congress, the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees, will be women.

All of them are tough and smart, but all eyes will be on new House Appropriations Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-Texas). She will be tasked with balancing the needs of a committee that is known mostly for its bipartisan nature with a Republican conference that is not all that interested in compromising with the political establishment. 

If anybody can figure out a way to deliver victories for her conservative colleagues, it will be Granger. But the track record for the Appropriations Committee over the last several years under Democratic rule has been uneven at best. It has been a long while since the committee has been able to produce the 12 conference reports going through the kind of regular order that shows the American people that Congress knows what it is doing. Usually, as was the case last year, all the spending bills are piled up in one end-of-the-year package, provoking outrage and frustration among the Republican base. 

Granger is going to have some arrows in her quiver that should help to make her job easier.  First, Republicans overwhelmingly voted to protect earmarks in spending bills. If done correctly, earmarks can help Congress control how the executive branch spends appropriated money, which is pretty much how the Founders envisioned the process working. This will become especially important to Republicans in the last two years of the Biden administration. 

Second, Republicans have reinstated the Holman rule. William Holman, a congressman from Indiana who served on and off from 1859 until 1897, created the rule to cut spending for specific agencies or federal employees that he didn’t like. Holman was notorious in congressional history for being against wasteful Washington spending. 

The Democrats did away with the Holman rule when they took over the Congress in 2018, but Republicans revived it as part of the rules package passed last week. Granger and her team will use this tactic to get the attention of the executive branch and give fodder to the Republican base. 

These two tools, one to build support among members for legislation, the other to compel the executive branch to stop acting crazy, will be especially useful to Granger. A former Fort Worth mayor, Granger knows how to combine political pragmatism with conservative instincts to survive in today’s Republican Conference. 

The new House majority has two critical decisions to make. First, does it really want a “regular order” process that will avoid another omnibus spending bill but will require compromise with the Senate and with the Biden administration? Second, how important is defense spending to the Republican Party? 

Unfortunately, the Republicans aren’t in a political position to get everything they want. So they will have to make some hard choices. Granger has made it clear that defense cuts are not something that she will support, but it is not abundantly clear where the rest of the Republican conference is on this issue. And while House Republicans are more than happy to cut domestic spending, it is highly unlikely that Senate Democrats will go along with those plans. 

At the end of the day, Republicans will have to proceed boldly and hold the executive branch accountable through rigorous oversight and through the House Appropriations Committee and its new chairwoman, deploying the power of the purse to assert congressional privilege as envisioned by our Founding Fathers.

Feehery is a partner at EFB Advocacy and blogs at thefeeherytheory.com. He served as spokesman to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), as communications director to former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and as a speechwriter to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.).