House leaders canceled votes scheduled for next week as the GOP majority struggles to pass its fiscal 2025 appropriations bills.
The decision to scrap next week’s session came a day after Republican leaders had to yank the Energy-Water spending bill from the floor amid growing doubts they could muster enough votes to pass it with their razor-thin majority.
Democrats have been marching in lockstep against the GOP-written spending measures, and some Republicans signaled Tuesday night they might oppose the Energy-Water bill amid concerns over Energy Department permitting standards and a Georgia port expansion project, among other things.
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., chair of the Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee, said his bill won’t be brought back to the floor until September at the earliest, as the House prepares to leave town after Thursday morning votes for an extra-long August recess.
“It’s a good rock-solid bill, but a few members had some issues with it and we’re going to try to address that and come back in September,” Fleischmann said Wednesday.
He said a dispute with Georgia Republicans over funding they wanted to study a potential Savannah harbor-deepening project to allow larger container ships through to the port there was among the issues they need to sort out.
Fleischmann pointed out his bill didn’t fund the study because it is precluded under the current water resources development authorization law. The latest WRDA update bill, which passed the House on Monday, would change that, but that measure still has a ways to go before reaching the president’s desk.
“For some, they felt they wanted some things on the water side that they didn’t get and we’re going to take a look at those things. Some of the things under law we could not get. We could not authorize on an appropriations bill,” Fleischmann said. “But we’re going to have a good, furtive conversation and give it another shot in September.”
Republicans were still hoping to pass their Interior-Environment bill Wednesday night after considering amendments earlier in the day. But it was also possible they will forgo a final vote on the bill so as not to risk another defeat.
House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said the Interior-Environment vote was “too close to call” at the moment, but he’s not ruling out passage later on Wednesday evening. “We wouldn’t be proceeding today if they didn’t think they were in the ballpark,” Cole said.
The House two weeks ago voted down its Legislative Branch bill, mostly because of a provision blocking a pay raise for members.
While the House has passed four of its 12 annual spending bills, totaling more than two-thirds of annual agency budgets, other GOP-written measures increasingly appear out of reach. Democrats oppose the deep cuts to nondefense spending and conservative policy riders included in the bills, and just a few GOP defections can be enough to sink a bill on the floor, given the slim majority.
Dwindling agenda
The only two remaining legislative items on the docket this month include a bipartisan resolution to establish a task force to investigate the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, and a more partisan one attacking the border enforcement record of Vice President Kamala Harris, the expected Democratic presidential nominee.
It appears House GOP leaders want to send members home to campaign Thursday after the Harris resolution vote — something that unites the party — rather than continue to suffer through divisive spending bill debates.
GOP leaders all week had been mulling the possibility of sending members home early rather than remain in session next week as previously scheduled. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Wednesday that the decision to cancel votes next week wasn’t a direct result of problems with the appropriations bills.
“It’s not related to that. We’ve had a tumultuous couple of weeks in American politics and everybody’s, to be honest, still tired from our convention, and it’s just a good time to give everybody time to go home to their districts and campaign a little bit. We’ll come back and regroup and continue to work on this.”
Johnson also said funeral arrangements for Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who died last weekend after a battle with pancreatic cancer, would pose logistical challenges next week. Johnson said a lot of members would want to attend the events, to be held in Houston, which could keep members away from Washington for three days.
The outlook is similarly grim come September, the focus will shift to passing a stopgap funding measure to avoid a partial government shutdown when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. Cole also said a supplemental disaster relief package would be on the September docket. “There are discussions going on,” he said.
Aidan Quigley contributed to this report.
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