Quell Freedom Caucus

Ryan moves to quell Freedom Caucus anger on budget

By Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan

Speaker Paul Ryan is meeting with House Freedom Caucus members late Tuesday night as an uprising simmers in the conservative rank-and-file over government spending levels and increased deficits.

The late-night "budget and beer" get-together, which is being hosted by Ryan in his Capitol office, is intended to discuss House Republican spending plans. Just before that meeting, the Freedom Caucus will privately meet without Ryan, according to several sources with knowledge of the gathering.

Freedom Caucus members Monday night overwhelmingly said they would oppose a 2017 spending plan being crafted by Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.), Ryan and other party leaders unless they agree to tens of billions of dollars in additional spending cuts, Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) said. Mulvaney informed Ryan at a closed-door meeting earlier on Tuesday, and the Freedom Caucus will repeat the message tonight.

"I hope to hear that maybe we hear that we're going to spend less money, maybe passing a budget at a lower number," Mulvaney said of HFC gathering with Ryan. "I had a chance this afternoon to convey to Paul the consensus of the [Freedom Caucus] last night, which was unanimous in opposition to a budget at the higher levels of the Boehner budget agreement last fall."

However, rewriting the spending plan would violate an agreement GOP leaders reached with President Barack Obama and Democrats last year as part of the omnibus budget deal. The White House, Democrats and some Republicans — notably defense hawks — would object to further cuts.

The 2017 fiscal-year budget has emerged as a major hurdle for House Republican leaders, and a challenge for Ryan. Former Speaker John Boehner cut a deal last year setting top-line budget targets for the next several years.

But conservatives, led by members of the Freedom Caucus who sit on the Budget Committee, such as Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), want additional deficit reduction and are threatening to vote against the fiscal blueprint at its current levels. Members of the conservative caucus want to cut $30 billion from next year's budget. Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) have said no so far to any such changes.

In fact, Ryan and McCarthy met with Budget Committee members, urging them to support the budget at agreed-upon levels when it comes time. However, the leadership is going to rely heavily on Ryan to make the sell. The Wisconsin Republican is a former Budget Committee chairman, and he has on several occasions helped push spending plans through the committee and the House floor prior to becoming speaker.

The first hurdle for the GOP leadership is passing the budget out of committee, which is expected later this month.

“We’d like to have our markup the last week of February, that’s our goal," Price said in an interview. "Everything is on the table. We’re looking at everything that ought to be done to get folks back to work at jobs they want, at the job level they want to work, as opposed to part-time employment that is the Obama economy. Everything is on the table.”

Obama releases his own budget plan next week, but with Republicans in charge of the House and Senate, it will be dead on arrival.

Ryan and other top Republicans are expected to argue that without a budget that both chambers can agree on, the House will be unable to reach consensus on annual spending bills with the Senate, and instead will be forced to fund government through continuing funding resolutions — or even worse to conservatives, an omnibus spending bill. Conservatives see such legislative catch-all bills as an anathema.

Ryan has said that normalizing the House floor and the spending process are among his top priorities as speaker.