WASHINGTON—House Republicans are departing Washington having missed a deadline to pass their long-stalled budget and not appearing to be trying very hard to revive it.
Continuing divisions between tea party lawmakers and House GOP leaders also shelved an effort to address an economic crisis in Puerto Rico. The White House is amping up the pressure on Republicans over delays in providing money to combat the Zika virus.
The budget failure, while embarrassing to House Speaker Paul Ryan, isn’t stopping the once-dominant House and Senate Appropriations committees from commencing work on spending bills. But trouble on the House floor awaits, where only a handful of the measures seem sure to advance.
The budget fight has its roots in last year’s bipartisan budget deal with President Barack Obama, which required Democratic votes to pass and added more than $100 billion over two years to agency coffers hit by automatic budget curbs known in Washington-speak as sequestration.
Many conservatives opposed the additional spending and are refusing to vote for a leadership-driven budget plan that endorses it. The GOP fiscal blueprint also recommends record spending cuts to meet its target of a balanced budget within 10 years, which means Democrats won’t vote for it even though it endorses higher agency budgets for the upcoming fiscal year.
“The Ryan budget that has been proposed is the most devastating road-to-ruin budget in history,” said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. “And even that wasn’t brutal enough for the radical forces that have taken control and dominate the House Republican caucus.”
Ryan on Thursday seemed ready to all but throw in the towel on this year’s budget drive.
“Part of the problem is we’re a victim of the success of the fact that we have appropriation numbers already in law,” Ryan explained. “We already have an agreement in law and that has taken pressure off of the budget situation.”
