Congress faces a heavy lift when it returns next week. But Utah’s newest representative, who’s held the job for barely a month, says she isn’t deterred.
“I still remain optimistic,” Rep. Celeste Maloy told the Deseret News on Thursday.
Fresh off a plane from Texas where she toured the southern border as part of a delegation led by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Maloy outlined the hurdles Congress has to clear in the first few weeks of the session.
Months of Republican Party infighting and unfruitful negotiations between the House and Senate have brought lawmakers to the new year with no clear path forward on must-pass legislation. After two extensions to government funding, the country’s legislators find themselves moving toward yet another self-imposed deadline in mid-January and early February to finalize the 2024 budget.
Maloy said she and her colleagues have no choice but to buckle down and do the work they were sent to Washington, D.C., to do.
“Everyone in the House is really focused on this. It is the only priority right now,” she said. “I still remain optimistic.” But, she added, “I think I’m in the minority.”
The odds of getting the 12 annual spending bills through the House and Senate are uncertain, Maloy said, because top appropriators and party leadership have yet to agree on a top-line spending total to use as a benchmark.
“That really is the biggest hold up right now,” Maloy said. “As soon as they have those top-line numbers, they can build a bill that matches it.”
However, lawmakers appear to be talking past each other on this issue, with the GOP-led House demanding substantial reductions to discretionary spending and the Democratic-run Senate arguing that funding limits were already agreed to in last year’s debt ceiling deal that was brokered by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the Biden White House.
That deal, the Fiscal Responsibility Act, increased the government’s borrowing to pay off past debt while setting a total discretionary spending limit of $1.6 trillion for fiscal year 2024, including $886 billion for defense and $704 billion for non-defense expenditures. This represents a decrease of $12 billion from 2023.
GOP spending hawks, referencing the fact that McCarthy’s compromise relied on more Democratic votes than Republican, have pushed their narrow House majority to advance seven appropriations bills that fall well under the levels agreed to last June. But such efforts have been a non-starter in the Senate.
“The House is holding the line, is how I would put it, on spending cuts,” Maloy explained. “And so far, the Senate hasn’t been willing to cut as deep as the House has.”
To avoid another shutdown near-miss, as well as the fallout of a third “continuing resolution,” or CR, which dozens of Republicans have vowed to oppose, Johnson has toyed with the idea of passing a long-term CR for the remainder of the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30. Critics of this plan, including Maloy, say a simple, but slightly smaller, extension of last year’s spending levels will diminish Congress’ ability to alter the funding of federal agencies to meet present needs.
“The downside to that is you also aren’t setting policy priorities,” Maloy said. “The power of the purse is how Congress tells the executive branch what they should and should not be focused on. And under a continuing resolution, Congress isn’t doing that.”
Another feature of the Fiscal Responsibility Act will come into play if the gridlock continues. If the House and the Senate are unable to negotiate compromised versions of the 12 spending bills, or can’t agree on a long-term CR, before April 30, then an across-the-board spending cut of 1% will affect all government agencies.
While an extension of 2023 polices at slightly lower levels is better than the large spending increases of past years, “it’s not Congress doing our job,” Maloy said.
After visiting the border, Maloy said border security provisions, like those included in the House’s HR2 bill from last year that would reinstate some Trump-era immigration policies, should be included in this year’s spending negotiations.
“This is an essential function of the federal government,” Maloy said. “If we’re passing a federal budget for next year, that budget has to address what happens at the border.”
According to Maloy, the dual unwanted outcomes of a government shutdown or a funding extension with little input from lawmakers will force both parties and both chambers to come to the table for final budget talks before government agencies run out of funds in two different segments, the first on Jan. 19 followed shortly after by a funding expiration on Feb. 2.
“I think we’re going to find a way to get there,” Maloy said. “Because there aren’t good options if we don’t get there.”
