With House GOP leaders under pressure from hard-right lawmakers, Republican appropriators in that chamber will write their fiscal 2024 spending bills to meet the tight budget caps that Freedom Caucus and other spending hawks have sought since January.
The subcommittee allocations that Appropriations Chairwoman Kay Granger, R-Texas, rolled out to Republican panel members at a Monday evening meeting would, on paper, cut funding levels enacted last December back to what was appropriated for fiscal 2022. That’s what conservatives have been demanding since a group of holdouts initially blocked Speaker Kevin McCarthy from winning the gavel.
The new “302(b)” allocations reviewed by CQ Roll Call total $1.471 trillion, or $119 billion less than the spending caps outlined in the debt ceiling package negotiated by McCarthy and President Joe Biden and $131 billion less than the current fiscal year. McCarthy and other top Republicans in recent days have been describing the debt deal’s caps as a ceiling, not a floor.
