Oklahoma Delegation Comments On Latest Government Funding Dilemma

Congress heads home for the weekend with no clear plan for meeting the deadline — one week away — for keeping the government funded. An agreement on a topline spending number opened the door to progress, but so far little has been made.

The threat of a partial government shutdown is, at this point, par for the course on Capitol Hill. In fact, from the moment the last threat was averted with the passage of a 'laddered' continuing resolution in mid-November, some saw this coming. The announcement that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had agreed on an overall spending limit last week seemed, however, like a step forward.

"Well, it’s somewhat of a Groundhog Day," noted Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-OK5) in an interview Thursday, "because this agreement was actually passed in April of last year."

In essence, the top line numbers agreed to by Johnson and Schumer -- $886 billion for defense and $773 billion for non-defense discretionary spending -- closely mirror the levels contained in the Fiscal Responsibility Act negotiated last spring by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden.

"I can’t support the deal," said Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-OK2) in an interview Friday.

Brecheen and other fiscal hawks have been pushing for cuts that would bring spending back to pre-Covid levels, as well as for the removal of what conservatives say are objectionable social policies that Democrats have baked into recent appropriations bills. The top line of $1.66 trillion, he says, is too high.

"I was a lean 'no' to begin with, but just hearing the top line number—that matters to me," said Brecheen, "our entire discretionary budget now is borrowed money."

Friday morning, Johnson said he has no plans to back away from the deal.

"Our top-line agreement remains," Johnson told reporters. "We are getting our next steps together, and we are working toward a robust appropriations process. So stay tuned for all of that to develop."

For some Republicans, the real problem is the failure to follow the appropriations process as it's laid out in the 1974 Budget Control Act.

"We’ve only actually done the process correctly four times in 50 years," said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK1), "there’s no muscle memory on how to do this. The last time this was done was actually much like the environment now where we had a Democratic president in Bill Clinton and a Speaker of the House that was Republican and Senate leadership that was Republican -- they worked together to fund the government properly."

Others in the Oklahoma delegation are frustrated by nay-sayers, pointing out that the numbers Johnson agreed to would represent a cut in spending.

"We didn’t get here overnight," said Rep. Bice, "we’re not going to fix this problem overnight -- this is an incremental step, and I think it’s in the right direction."

Moreover, some say that it's time for the Republican majority to show they can govern, which means passing a budget -- even if it requires compromise.

"You’ve got to get the money bills passed to be able to do all these other things, and there’s a lot of work to be done!" exclaimed Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK3) in an interview Friday. "And it’s very frustrating to me when a handful of my friends say, 'I want it my way, or no way.' Well, 'no way' is destructive."

Whether this latest funding drama will, in fact, be ‘destructive’ is impossible to say. Things can and sometimes do, change quickly in Washington, but as of Friday evening, the Democratic-controlled Senate is taking the lead on beating next Friday's funding deadline, with plans to move a short-term funding bill midweek next week.