Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said big fights are needed to counter the Obama administration's overreach. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
Republicans Planning 'Big Fights' on Agency Funding to Rein in Bureaucrats
White House says it hopes to hold GOP to its word that shutdown will be avoided.
The next agency funding deadline is more than five months away, but the threats and gamesmanship of shutdown politics are already in full swing.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal released Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., promised “some big fights over funding the bureaucracy” in the coming weeks. The Republican leader blamed the Obama administration’s overreach for forcing his hand to use the funding process as a means to rein in federal agencies.
“They won’t like it,” McConnell said of the White House and congressional Democrats. “We’ll have big fights over it.”
Asked about McConnell’s statements, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest pointed to comments the majority leader made after the 2014 election in which he vowed to avoid a government shutdown.
“I haven't seen the latest interview, but I did see the interview that he conducted shortly after the election in which he promised that there wouldn't be any more government shutdowns,” Earnest said. “I think I would anticipate that we're going to hold Senator McConnell to his word.”
McConnell’s fiscal showdown threat is not the first since a shutdown of the Homeland Security Department was narrowly avoided in March. Later that month, Obama threatened to veto any spending measure that met the spending caps included in the Budget Control Act.
Budget proposals from the House and Senate both cut far deeper than those required by that 10-year spending reduction plan. Conferees -- the congressional negotiators chosen by leadership to hammer out a compromise agreement between the two chambers -- will meet on Monday to begin talks on the budget blueprint. Republican budget leaders have said they do not expect much turbulence in striking a deal and passing a unified plan.
If and when a budget is agreed to, congressional appropriators will commence the task of writing the bills that spell out line-by-line how agencies can spend money. It is in that process McConnell envisions including policy riders to restrict and rescind agency regulations constructed under Obama’s watch.