The agreement that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached over the weekend with the more conservative members of his party might set the stage for a possible government shutdown later this year, the Washington Examiner reported on Wednesday.
That is because one of the demands McCarthy agreed to was to keep appropriations bills at last year's levels, which is far below the spending caps reached in the deal between the speaker and President Joe Biden in the debt limit negotiations last month.
Democrats in the House and Senate are certain to propose higher spending levels in their budget, which would set the stage for a fight over a possible shutdown, the Washington Examiner reported.
Congress must pass 12 separate spending bills before the Sept. 30 deadline to avoid a government shutdown, with each bill needing to pass both the House and Senate. This means that anything deviating too far from the bipartisan debt ceiling agreement could face major opposition.
Complicating the situation further is Utah Republican Rep. Chris Stewart's announcement last month that he will resign from Congress in the middle of September due to his wife's health.
This opens up a highly sought-after seat on the House Appropriations Committee, which is sure to create chaos in the GOP because several of McCarthy's critics are certain to use the opportunity to try for a larger presence at the negotiating table. Several of the conservative holdouts who delayed legislative action last week are among those already expressing interest in the position.
Democrats slammed the GOP's about-face on the issue, with Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California saying "the House Republican Conference is in shambles. It's shocking that it took less than two weeks for Republicans to walk away from an agreement that they made. This is an agreement that the speaker made directly, and he took pains to get everybody else out of the room and to get to the deal with just him and the president. And then he's walking away from that deal."
But Republican leaders rejected the criticism that intraparty tensions are interfering with House business, arguing that such tensions and disagreements are to be expected due to the GOP's slim majority.