Conservatives send warning to McCarthy on spending

A group of 21 hard-line conservative House Republicans told Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that they plan to vote against spending bills they think contain insufficient overall cuts and outlined specific demands of the Speaker that include him publicly rejecting the possibility of supplemental funding for Ukraine.

The warning shot comes as the House returns Tuesday for a three-week sprint ahead of August recess that will be dominated by appropriations and internal GOP conflicts about them.

“We plan to vote against any appropriations bills designed to achieve the approximately $1.586 trillion top-line spending level – roughly equal to the spending caps agreed to with President Biden in the debt ceiling deal and representing a mere 1% reduction from Democrats’ egregious post-COVID spending level,” the 21 GOP members said in a letter to McCarthy Monday.

In another portion of the letter, the members call on McCarthy to publicly reject the possibility of a supplemental appropriations bill for Ukraine.

The signatories consist mostly of members of the House Freedom Caucus and are led by the group’s chairman Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), but the letter does not represent an official Freedom Caucus position. With Republicans holding just a slim majority in the House, the 21 members could easily sink any party-line spending measure.

The members said they are “thankful” for McCarthy’s “recent efforts – since that debt ceiling agreement – to restore crossconference meetings to achieve consensus on appropriations.”

Conservatives for weeks have filtered in and out of meetings in the Speaker’s offices as they push McCarthy to craft baseline spending bills at fiscal year 2022 levels, accusing GOP leadership of using “budgetary gimmicks” like rescinding already-approved funds to get spending to that lower level.

“Rescissions are useful in reducing spending and we encourage their use, but we cannot support using them to shift funding to the very bureaucrats implementing the Biden agenda at roughly current levels of spending, thereby enshrining and continuing Democrats’ reckless inflationary spending,” the letter said.

The conservatives also demanded that McCarthy not consider any appropriations measure on the House floor until the House Appropriations Committee passes all 12 annual appropriations bills.

McCarthy, in a break from past House Speakers, has committed to passing all 12 regular appropriations bills in the House. But some GOP members have wondered if he will be forced to accept an omnibus package from the Senate.

The conservatives in the letter asked McCarthy to also publicly reject the possibility of an omnibus appropriations measure. 

“Through continued conversations, we will consider options in good faith that address the spending crisis in concert with other urgent policy changes – beyond simple one year riders that likely won’t make it past the Senate and the President’s desk,” the letter said. “For example, enactment of H.R. 2 to secure the border, capping or cutting the harmful impacts of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, and/or forcing the President to follow current laws and restricting its ability to abuse executive power to advance his radical agenda.”