The top appropriators of the House and Senate are still pursuing a bipartisan spending agreement ahead of the March 14 deadline to avoid a government shutdown — barely a month away.
House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said the so-called “four corners” spending leaders are getting closer to agreement, but are still “not there,” following a Tuesday night meeting.
“We’ve been negotiating, we’re working hard, and we’ve closed some of the gap,” Cole told reporters Wednesday. “We have some knotty issues between us. Are we as far apart as we were? No, we’re not. We’ve made considerable progress.”
But time is running out: it typically takes at least a month for lawmakers to close out negotiations on the dozen appropriations bills once an overarching agreement on “topline” spending levels is struck. And despite Cole’s optimistic tone just off the House floor, Speaker Mike Johnson was sounding less positive outside his Capitol office on Wednesday afternoon.
“We have been negotiating in good faith,” Johnson said of Cole and Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins of Maine, the Republicans involved in the talks. He added, however, that Democrats have sent over counter-offers they know are “not deliverable.”
Democrats said Tuesday that they were still awaiting a unified offer from Republicans after House and Senate GOP negotiators initially put forth different proposals, with the Senate offer significantly higher than the House’s.
Johnson’s comments also came amid reports that the speaker instructed Cole to leave the negotiating table and begin preparations to pass a full-year continuing resolution that could trigger across-the-board spending cuts — a consequence of the 2023 deal that raised the debt limit. Cole denied that any such instruction had been handed down.
“I’ve not been told” to stop working with Democrats to agree on topline spending levels for the 12 appropriations bills, Cole said Wednesday. He said he had requested a meeting with Johnson on Wednesday morning to discuss next steps, but nothing was yet on the calendar for the two men to sit down to talk.
At the same time, House GOP leaders have recently said in private they believe it’s likely they will end up pursuing a continuing resolution that funds the government through the end of the fiscal year, along with wildfire aid and other additions, according to a person granted anonymity to discuss private conversation.
Cole said he believed efforts to ready a budget blueprint for a markup in the House Budget Committee Thursday morning, necessary for unlocking the reconciliation process to enact President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda, was “sucking out all the oxygen” around GOP leadership’s ability to attend to the larger government spending negotiations.
“We probably have a little bit less leadership attention on [appropriations] — and I don’t say that critically. They certainly give me a free hand. There’s no problem there,” said Cole, adding, “I don’t feel neglected.”
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
