The House speaker embraced major spending reductions to win conservative support for a government funding bill.
Cutting housing subsidies for the poor by 33 percent as soaring rents drive a national affordability crisis. Forcing more than 1 million women and children onto the waitlist of a nutritional assistance program for poor mothers with young children. Reducing federal spending on home heating assistance for low-income families by more than 70 percent with energy prices high heading into the winter months.
“Bottom line is: We’re singularly focused right now on achieving our conservative objectives,” Graves said. Trying to court the votes of far-right lawmakers, Graves added that these “huge savings” were being proposed “despite the fact that you’ve had record inflation under this administration.” McCarthy, for his part, has emphasized that he is focused on approving government funding legislation with Republicans’ narrow majority, rather than trying to craft a bipartisan compromise that draws Democratic support. Hard-right lawmakers have warned that if McCarthy relies on Democratic votes to pass any fiscal bill, they will immediately move to force him from the speakership.“I believe we have a majority here, and we can work together to solve this,” McCarthy told reporters.
House lawmakers plan to try to move ahead Tuesday with a package of spending bills that would cover the full 2024 fiscal year for four swaths of the government. Even if those bills were approved by the Senate, which they won’t be, much of the government would still shut down because federal operations are funded by 12 different bills. Hard-right holdouts blocked action on one of those last week.
As McCarthy has seen his efforts to fund the government derailed by repeated revolts, the speaker has toyed with increasingly large spending cuts in hopes of passing something through the chamber to minimize the extent to which the GOP is blamed for a potential shutdown.
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