The House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative lawmakers in the House, outlined Monday what conditions would need to be met for it to vote for a new spending bill.
The group said spending bills should include provisions on border security, the “unprecedented weaponization” of the Justice Department and the FBI, and the Pentagon’s “cancerous woke polices.” The conservative lawmakers also oppose “any blank check for Ukraine in any supplemental appropriations bill.”
The move by the House Freedom Caucus comes amid momentum for a short-term spending bill to be passed in late September. The government’s fiscal year ends Sept. 30. Since Congress doesn’t appear poised to complete and pass the 12 appropriations bills by then, lawmakers are talking about passing another continuing resolution—a bill that extends current spending levels for a specific length of time.
“In the eventuality that Congress must consider a short-term extension of government funding through a continuing resolution, we refuse to support any such measure that continues Democrats’ bloated COVID-era spending and simultaneously fails to force the Biden administration to follow the law and fulfill its most basic responsibilities,” the Freedom Caucus writes.
“Any support for a ‘clean’ continuing resolution would be an affirmation of the current [fiscal year] 2023 spending level grossly increased by the lame-duck December 2022 omnibus spending bill that we all vehemently opposed just seven months ago.”
Some Republican lawmakers specified their conditions for any spending bill in posts on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter:
The Freedom Caucus specifically is calling for any spending bill to include the Secure the Border Act, which passed the House in May on a largely party-line vote of 219-213.
At the time, House Republican leaders—Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer, and Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik—said the legislation would “increase the number of Border Patrol agents, provide effective border enforcement technology, resume construction of the border wall, and end the administration’s catch and release policy.”
The Freedom Caucus also said any spending bill must “address the unprecedented weaponization of the Justice Department and FBI to focus them on prosecuting real criminals instead of conducting political witch hunts and targeting law-abiding citizens.”
Caucus members also called for spending bills to end “the cancerous woke policies in the Pentagon undermining our military’s core warfighting mission.”
“The time to hold the line against a December spending monstrosity is now,” wrote Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, in a post on X. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
“A secure border, equal application of the law, and a competent military are the most fundamental functions of the federal government,” Roberts added. “If it can’t do these basic tasks, it shouldn’t be funded.”
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