The Republican-led Home voted Friday to strip President Joe Biden’s homeland safety secretary and secretary of state of their salaries. It accepted measures banning navy installations from having drag queen story hours for youngsters. And it handed laws prohibiting paid depart for Pentagon workers who get an abortion.
The provisions have been included in three spending payments to fund the departments of Protection, State and Homeland Safety that Home Republicans muscled by means of largely alongside get together traces — though none of them have any hope of changing into regulation.
With a authorities funding deadline looming on the finish of September and a high-stakes election in November, lawmakers have entered a interval of legislative theatrics, the place every chamber is advancing spending payments that the opposite won’t ever approve.
Within the Home, for a second 12 months in a row, that has meant that Republican leaders have opened the floodgates to a barrage of conservative priorities.
“None of those payments — none of them — shall be signed into regulation the way in which they’re written proper now,” mentioned Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. “That is about present enterprise proper now, performing for probably the most excessive proper wing of the Republican base.”
Lawmakers voted on dozens of amendments that presaged the bitter spending combat Congress will take up this fall. The Home-passed payments present a beginning marker for bipartisan negotiations with the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Privately, most appropriators acknowledge {that a} stopgap, short-term spending invoice will more than likely be wanted to avert a authorities shutdown on the finish of September, punting the controversy over federal spending till after the November elections.
Republicans have insisted they’re utilizing their energy of the purse to rein in federal companies which have strayed from their core missions.
“It eliminates controversial or ineffective packages that American taxpayers don’t help and that, fairly frankly, our allies and companions don’t help, both,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., mentioned of the State Division invoice.
The laws accepted Friday would barely improve funding for the Pentagon, offering a 4.5% pay increase for all navy personnel whereas chopping roughly $670 million for anti-climate change and variety initiatives. It will scale back funding for the State Division by 12%, and supply a slight increase to funding for the Division of Homeland Safety.