Representative Chip Roy (TX-21) issued the following statement on the Johnson/Schumer spending deal.
House Republicans set out at the beginning of this Congress to cut spending significantly year-over-year and rein in the federal bureaucracy. The appropriations deal announced this week represents a complete failure on both fronts.
The agreement to spend $1.659 trillion in FY2024 is $69 billion more than the already modest spending caps set by the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) debt limit deal and a roughly $30 billion increase in spending year-over-year.
Why? Because Republican leadership agreed to use budget gimmicks to maintain non-defense spending at levels set by Nancy Pelosi’s FY 2023 omnibus, instead of doing the right thing by cutting that funding to offset more defense spending.
And while the deal’s use of 25% of Biden’s IRS expansion plus some unspent COVID money is a modest crumb – it still fully funds the federal bureaucracy at war with the freedom and security of the American people. This includes a politically weaponized DOJ, an EPA killing US energy, and – most importantly – a DHS pushing open borders.
The FRA contained multiple – admittedly limited – ways for Republicans to leverage caps to actually cut spending year-over-year. This includes simply defaulting to a full-year funding extension that would have reduced spending to $1.564 trillion – but we couldn’t even muster the courage to do that and, instead, swamp side deals won the day for the uniparty. This deal is a slap in the face to those of us who knew the FRA didn’t go far enough – but even more, for my colleagues who voted for it under the pretext that it would actually cut spending, and the American people are left holding the bag.
We are left only with the glimmer of hope that Republican leadership will fight to secure the aggressive riders necessary to even remotely salvage this year’s appropriations process. But, if the recent capitulation on the NDAA is the controlling precedent, I would not hold my breath.
