House leadership pulled off something of a coup late Wednesday when the fiscal 2025 Interior-Environment spending bill passed, avoiding becoming the second GOP-drafted appropriations bill in as many days to be yanked ahead of scheduled votes.
The episode marks the end of House appropriations votes until September, as leadership announced earlier Wednesday it would forgo votes next week amid scheduling conflicts and a hectic campaign season.
Hopes were already dwindling for passage of the remaining spending bills amid intraparty GOP conflicts, and sending members home instead would preserve the image of party unity rather than end the work period on a divisive note. Party leaders haven’t been getting more than a handful of Democratic votes on spending bills so far this cycle, meaning they couldn’t afford many Republican defections.
[House lawmakers to start summer break Thursday morning]
The Interior-Environment bill, like the Energy-Water measure before it, was thought to be a relatively easier lift for GOP leaders. But they ran into numerous concerns from different party factions, and nearly ran out of time to resolve lingering issues.
‘Better to win than lose’
In the end, GOP leaders benefited from lawmaker absences and were able to pass the bill on a narrow 210-205 vote, despite a handful of Republican defections.
A number of conservatives viewed the Interior-Environment measure as too pricey, despite GOP appropriators’ advertised cuts to the bill. Some centrists in swing districts had the opposite concern.
“We worked hard to get it passed. We knew it was going to be close,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said after the vote. “What happens with a bill that’s close is members have questions with the spending levels, with where it is related to last year, to pre-COVID, we go through all that.”
After passage, House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole said he didn’t know they would have the votes going in, but once the vote proceeded, he figured leadership had sealed the deal.
“It’s this person or that person having a concern about this issue or that issue. The margin is just so narrow that if one person has a concern, or misunderstanding” the bill could be defeated, Cole, R-Okla., said. “But the whip team answered the questions, got them the information they needed, convinced them it was better to win than lose.”
The five Republican “no” votes were: Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Tom McClintock of California, Marc Molinaro of New York and David Schweikert of Arizona.
GOP leaders got help from a lone Democrat: Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, representing an oil patch district, voted for the legislation.
Eye of the beholder
The base bill would provide about $38.5 billion for the EPA, most of the Interior Department and a range of environmental and cultural agencies, from the Smithsonian Institution to the National Endowment for the Arts. From a technical accounting standpoint, that’s a slight trim, about $72 million, or about 0.2 percent on average, from the current fiscal year’s comparable level.
Some parts of the bill would be cut more deeply than others: EPA’s base budget would be sliced by 20 percent, the Smithsonian by 12 percent and the National Park Service would take a 6 percent hit. The relatively tiny Council on Environmental Quality would see its funding cut by nearly 80 percent, down to just $1 million.
But when other funding provided outside of regular spending limits is taken into consideration, including for wildland firefighting and cleaning up Superfund sites, the overall bill starts to look more like a roughly 1 percent boost over fiscal 2024 comparable levels.
“There are going to be opportunities to vote on amendments that will try and trim some of that,” Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., said of the topline funding level a few hours before the scheduled vote. The former chair of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus added he was waiting to see which amendments were adopted before he threw his support behind the measure.
Perry’s amendment to eliminate the remaining $1 million in CEQ funds was defeated, 173-243. He had better luck on his amendment to block any funds in the bill from being used for environmental justice initiatives; that was adopted on a 210-204 vote. Perry ultimately voted for the bill.
‘Heavier lift’
Cole predicted Wednesday morning that the vote would be tight, and the outlook was cloudy throughout the day.
“It’s a heavier lift for sure,” GOP Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., said a few hours before the scheduled vote. “There are a lot of different issues, we’ll just continue to work through them.”
Their whip efforts paid off, and the House has now passed five of the 12 annual spending bills.
But it’s hard to see a path for the remainder, as floor time gets sparse in September and attention will be on simply extending current funding levels in a stopgap bill to avoid a partial government shutdown.
House leadership had punted a vote on its fiscal 2025 Energy-Water bill just minutes before a scheduled vote Tuesday night after it became clear they couldn’t muster enough support. GOP divisions were on display over Energy Department permitting standards and local issues like a Georgia port expansion project, among other things.
The House two weeks ago voted down its Legislative Branch bill, mostly because of a provision to block a pay raise for members.
Prior to passing the Interior-Environment bill, lawmakers adopted a number of partisan GOP amendments, which may have limited defections.
These included amendments to bar the EPA from implementing its heavy-duty vehicle emissions standards; another that would prohibit funds for the EPA’s Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Workgroup; and one that would bar the EPA from allowing California to set more stringent standards for locomotive emissions.
Others were rejected, such as an amendment from Rep. Diana Harshbarger, R-Tenn., to bar any funding in the bill for the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, which fell on a 174-239 vote, with 39 Republicans joining all Democrats in opposition.
The Interior Department body voted last year to replace several locality names that had previously included a derogatory term for Native American women. The decision affected a town in East Tennessee, among others.
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