After Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and other Republican leaders embarrassingly had to pull four funding bills from the House floor this summer over internal party disagreements, this week GOP leaders just decided to pull the plug on legislating and start their summer recess early.
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“They're the party of chaos and dysfunction,” Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV) — the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus — told Raw Story. “They don't know how to govern. They're not here to put the American people first. They focus more on political games and brinksmanship — pitting communities against each other — than they are solving problems and moving our country forward.”
Republican-on-Republican brawls
It’s not just Democrats.
As frustrations grow, Republicans are also pointing the finger at other Republicans.
“Oh, I totally and completely agree,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told Raw Story. “I mean, as the majority, we can't pass bills, because of the different arguing.”
Earlier this week, Republican leaders unexpectedly pulled the party’s annual energy and water funding bill after internal GOP disputes over its price tag. Unresolved amendments further imperiled the typically uncontroversial measure.
“Why can’t you guys pass spending bills?” Raw Story asked.
“Talk to the speaker about that,” Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) told Raw Story.
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While these holdouts from the far-right wing of the Republican Party are making it look like the GOP can’t govern, they don’t care.
“Well, we’re over funding the government, in my opinion,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) — one of the eight Republicans who dethroned former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) — told Raw Story.
This week, conservative complaints over the funding levels and that abortion restrictions were stripped out derailed the Agriculture and Financial Services funding measures. And last month, Republicans pulled their funding measure for themselves, the legislative branch, because some members were upset that it blocked a scheduled pay raise for lawmakers. (Most members of Congress have earned $174,000 annually since 2009.)
GOP leaders cancel floor fireworks
Next week seemed destined to feature political fireworks.
The Republican Party was scheduled to tackle the House’s Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill, which already included nearly $1 billion in cuts to the Department of Justice (think action against the “Deep State”).
It also cuts 11 percent from the budgets of U.S. attorneys’ offices, while also cutting salaries and expenses in the Department of Justice by 20 percent.
But that wasn’t good enough for former President Donald Trump’s fiercest allies in the House.
Party leaders rejected additional cuts demanded by the far-right: defunding special counsel Jack Smith, for example.
For her part, Greene was one of at least three Republicans who were prepared to offer amendments defunding special counsels.
Even though Senate Democrats and the Biden White House were all but certain to strip any of those measures from the final spending bill, Greene says the amendments are more than mere politics.
“They’re incredibly important, because people need to be fired,” Greene told Raw Story. “And that's one of the problems in the federal government, that doesn't happen. Private industry, private companies are successful all the time, because not only do they produce the budgets that produce a profit but they also fire people when they're not doing a good job. I mean, we can go through the list, but I don't think these people deserve their paychecks.”
Earlier this month, two days after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, Boebert dropped a measure to “prohibit the use of Federal funds for the salary of the Director of the United States Secret Service.”
She’s been claiming a win since Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned earlier this week. But Boebert and other Republicans still want to exact a few pounds of flesh from another law enforcement agency — the FBI.
“I don't offer amendments or legislation that I don't feel is important,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) told Raw Story. “This is something that I want to get to the bottom of. And also, you know, this FBI who has failed us on just about every level and is now responsible for the investigation of the assassination attempt on President Trump and I don't trust it.”
Speaker Johnson only has three votes to spare in his party, given the tiny majority Republicans hold over Democrats. Efforts such as slashing funding for the FBI make these spending measures unserious to Democrats, who won’t vote for them across the board.
But Boebert — no friend of Greene but allied on these issues — says they’re vital.
“Our FBI has been weaponized and should not have increased funding. It should not even be funded at the level that it is. It shouldn't be staffed at the level that it is,” Boebert said. “And, you know, I think that we could have done a better job throughout this Congress in getting to the bottom of the weaponization of our federal government.”
Democrats complain their GOP counterparts are weaponizing something themselves — the legislative process.
“This is crazy,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) — a “Squad” member who recently lost his primary bid to a more moderate Democrat — told Raw Story. “The people who support them support the chaos. The destruction of the federal government and the defunding of the federal government and all of that, that's what it seems like, you know, their base, you know, gut Roe v. Wade, get rid of DEI [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] stuff, like, ‘Trump is our champion.’”
Veteran Republicans bemoan infighting
Some veteran congressional Republicans admit it’s crazy, too — at least when they’re not being quoted, by name and for the record, for Raw Story news stories..
Otherwise, they’re claiming mini-victories for moving all the annual spending measures out of committee and passing five of the 12 on the House floor.
They’ve put on happy-enough faces now that Republicans have derailed Republicans’ plans to do what they ran on when they recaptured the House in 2022 and pass the nation’s 12 spending bills.
But failing to pass the other seven spending measures weakens the GOP ahead of inevitable negotiations with Senate Democrats and President Joe Biden.
“It does help in the negotiations if you can pass the bill on the floor. When there's a small number of Republicans that don't want to vote for other Republicans’ bills, it weakens Republican’s position in negotiations,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) — an 11-term lawmaker who’s a senior member of the spending, or appropriations, committee — told Raw Story. “But ultimately, we're still going to have to negotiate.”
As for House Republicans failing to live up to what they promised voters?
Like GOP leaders, Diaz-Balart is banking on the American people not paying attention to the party’s high-stakes stumbles as Democrats and Republicans fight for control of Congress during the November election.
“It's inside baseball. This is inside baseball,” Diaz-Balart said. “It's always frustrating when you can't get Republicans to support Republican bills, but your average voter doesn’t look at this process.”
Other Republicans from the party’s far-right are using the spending battles and party’s inability to even defund the government as another chance to sell a second Trump administration to voters, because they see House Speaker Johnson and retiring Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as a part of the problem.
“A lot of that will go away when we have real leadership,” Greene told Raw Story. “And we just don't have it right now.”
