Speaker Ryan Pitches Budget Plan, House Republicans Not Impressed
Speaker Ryan and House Republican leaders pitched their budget for Fiscal Year 2017 to the Republican conference this morning, reopening the bipartisan budget agreement by promising conservatives $30 billion in additional spending cuts. And if you think that means the House is any closer to considering a budget, think again. Republicans’ latest pitch didn’t seem to go over well with the conference, and the lack of specifics did nothing to appease the more hardline members of the party.
“House Republicans appear no closer to coalescing around a budget plan after a closed-door meeting on Thursday, in which GOP leaders pitched another tactic to trim spending.”
“The latest meeting, with its lack of specifics, raises doubts about the party’s prospects of passing a fiscal blueprint this year.”
“‘The level of specificity that we need to make a decision about how to proceed, we don’t have that information,’ Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas), chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, told The Hill.”
“‘We’ve got to get something to an actionable state. We’re going to need a [plan that says]: ‘Action X will reduce the deficit by Y,’ [Flores] said.”
“The two flanks within the GOP have been deeply divided on the budget for weeks, prompting the Budget Committee to postpone its process by two weeks. The committee now hopes to hold a markup on the budget in mid-March, with no timeline yet for bringing a vote to the House floor.”
“House GOP leaders made their latest attempt Thursday to fashion a budget to pass conservative muster, but it was quickly dismissed by hard-right lawmakers as not nearly good enough.”
“’Anything that doesn’t do something today about mandatory spending is going to be very hard for conservatives to adopt,’ said Idaho Rep. Raúl Labrador, a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus.”
“If GOP leaders fail to enlist support from conservatives, it could essentially derail Ryan's hope to approve 12 appropriation bills. The House would then likely pass a continuing resolution, a stopgap funding measure.”
“…Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus, said he would not support the budget proposal. ‘I'm not in favor of where this one's at right now. We've got to make some changes to it. We've got to do a Republican budget,’ Jordan said.”
“Republican Tim Huelskamp of Kansas said its ‘unlikely’ he will support a budget resolution at the $1.07 trillion discretionary level, which he called ‘the Boehner number,’ referring to former House Speaker John A. Boehner.”