Conservative Rebels Urge Speaker McCarthy To Cut Funding For 1,100 Federal Programs

These programs, which continue to operate without the necessary Congressional reauthorization, are being targeted as a potential solution for reducing government spending.

This demand is part of a series of requests advanced by a hardline group of lawmakers aligned with the conservative House Freedom Caucus. In exchange for their support of Republican leaders and their legislative objectives, they want Speaker McCarthy to support their fiscal reform efforts.

"This is a real plan to put downward pressure on spending after the horrible [McCarthy-Biden] debt bill," Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Republican from Florida, argued. Gaetz believes that such measures are urgently needed to address excessive spending.

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Rep. Ken Buck, a Republican from Colorado, initially proposed the idea of withdrawing funding from government programs lacking reauthorization. Buck asserted at the annual Western Conservative Summit that defunding such programs could be a straightforward means of controlling federal expenditure.

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According to Buck, "We have 1,118 programs that are unauthorized in the federal government. When they passed a program like the Endangered Species Act of 1973, it had a five-year sunset on it … So in 1978, it was reauthorized. It has not been reauthorized since and every year we increase spending on the Endangered Species Act."

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Buck highlighted that both political parties have consistently bypassed House rules to continue funding unauthorized programs. He lamented, "We have a House rule that we pass every Congress, Republicans and Democrats, [that] you can't appropriate money to an unauthorized program. We waive that rule in every appropriations bill. We've been in power five months, and we have looked at zero unauthorized programs."

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The proposal by Buck has gained traction among several lawmakers who recently voted alongside Democrats to obstruct a series of Republican initiatives. These political maneuvers resulted in a nearly two-day deadlock in the House, after which Speaker McCarthy dismissed lawmakers for the weekend.

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Conservative lawmakers have expressed frustration with McCarthy for disregarding their resistance and pushing through a bill suspending the debt limit until post-2024 elections with assistance from House Democrats. The conservatives want McCarthy to commit to excluding Democratic votes on future legislation.

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"We want him to choose us as his coalition partner, not the Democrats," Gaetz said. "We can't live in a world in which the Democrats are the coalition partner on the substantive and we're the coalition partner on the frivolous. And that's what we're trying to work through."

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Considering the slim majority in the House, Speaker McCarthy can only afford to lose four GOP votes on any legislation without needing to rely on Democratic support. This situation came into stark focus last week when Democrats refused to assist McCarthy in bringing several GOP bills to the floor, including those to prevent a White House ban on gas stoves.

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The resulting impasse left McCarthy without a working majority, effectively bringing House operations to a standstill. As lawmakers reconvened in Washington on Monday, there appeared to be little progress in resolving the issue.

Despite these challenges, McCarthy's ally, Rep. Patrick McHenry, a Republican from North Carolina, expressed optimism that a resolution is forthcoming. "There's interest in getting things knitted back together. I don't know if we're hours away or days away. But it will be resolved," he said.

Earlier this year, the Freedom Caucus nearly scuppered McCarthy's bid for the speakership. The group negotiated a decentralization of congressional leadership power as part of their agreement to allow McCarthy's ascendancy. A vital aspect of this change is a new provision permitting any lawmaker to initiate a vote to retain the speaker. This option hangs ominously over McCarthy's ongoing standoff with the conservative faction.

Yet, hardliners have not explicitly threatened to oust McCarthy. Instead, they're insisting on an agreement where McCarthy only commits to advancing legislation with GOP backing. They're also calling for a $130 billion reduction in the forthcoming government funding bill, even if it means targeting unauthorized programs.

This demand starkly contradicts McCarthy's prior agreement with the White House regarding the debt limit, which sees domestic spending remaining stable while defense spending increases by over 3%.