WASHINGTON — The hard-right Freedom Caucus is pushing House Republican leaders to make government funding conditional on passage of new citizenship requirements for a vote and create a new term that faces broad Senate opposition.
That tactic would risk a government shutdown just a month before the 2024 election, a scenario some GOP leaders prefer to avoid because it could play into Democratic hands politically.
The deadline to avoid a government shutdown is October 1. Election Day is November 5, although early voting begins before then.
With Congress in recess until Sept. 9 and little progress so far on appropriations, lawmakers are sure to need a short-term funding bill to avoid a shutdown.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has not made any decisions on what the CR might look like or when he will set a deadline for its completion.
The Freedom Caucus said in a statement on Monday that the group took the official position that CR “must be included.” SAVE Act – as called for by President Trump – to prevent non-citizens from voting to protect free and fair elections,” he accused the Biden-Harris administration of illegally “importing” people into the United States.
Trump and other top Republicans have echoed that claim and demanded nationwide proof of citizenship on the ballot, alleging a plan to use undocumented people to benefit Democrats in elections. It is non-citizen voting it is now illegal and very rare. Critics of the bill say the new requirements could disenfranchise American citizens.
The SAVE Act recently passed the Republican-led House of Representatives, but died on its way to the Democratic-controlled Senate. If GOP leaders were to add it to government funding, it would clash with Democrats and President Joe Biden, risking a government shutdown.
The Freedom Caucus added that in the event of a midterm bill, “government funding should be extended through early 2025 to avoid a lame-duck omnibus that preserves Democrats’ spending and policies well into the next administration.”
That would also cause a fight, as many lawmakers prefer to deal with government funding until the fall of 2025. House and Senate Democrats favor a late 2024 deadline. And Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, vice chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, recently told NBC News that pushing the deadline into the new year would be a “mistake” and that ending the process in 2024 would be smarter. the new president is a “clean slate” in January next year.
Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., said the Freedom Caucus’s demands were “extraordinarily partisan pills” that were “a start” calling for a bipartisan approach.
“The SAVE Act is nothing more than a partisan scare tactic designed to undermine confidence in our elections. “It’s already illegal for non-citizens to register and vote in federal elections — our elections are free and fair, despite Donald Trump’s dangerous, often incoherent ramblings,” Murray said in a statement to NBC News.
He said the Senate will “take a bipartisan path to ensure that we can fund the government and deliver responsible, bipartisan spending legislation that can actually be enacted by the end of the year.”
The Freedom Caucus is supported by its chairman, Rep. Bob Goode, R-Va. lost in a hotly contested primary with a wafer thin edge. But the roughly 40-member group punched above its weight in the narrow House GOP majority.
Asked for a response, Johnson spokeswoman Athina Lawson did not address the new conservative demands, saying only that the House had “made significant progress” on full-year funding legislation through next September.
“The House Appropriations Committee diligently moved all 12 bills out of committee, and the House has passed 75 percent of government funding for the upcoming fiscal year, while the Senate has yet to consider a single appropriations bill,” he said. “The Chamber will continue its successful efforts to responsibly fund the government for fiscal year 25 after returning from the district business cycle.”