House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Kay Granger on Tuesday postponed scheduled action on the fiscal 2024 Agriculture spending bill and three other measures, citing the ongoing negotiations with the White House over the debt ceiling limit.
The Agriculture bill, which would fund USDA, FDA and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has come under sharp criticism from Democrats both for its spending cuts and because it relied heavily on funding rescissions. The Appropriations Committee had been scheduled to debate the bill on Wednesday.
“Given recent developments in the negotiations between (House Speaker Kevin McCarthy) and the President, and in order to give the Speaker maximum flexibility as talks continue, the committee will postpone this week’s markups.” Granger, R-Texas, said in a statement.
The Agriculture bill includes an expansion of SNAP work requirements that McCarthy has been pushing as part of the debt ceiling talks.
The four FY24 bills are among 12 appropriations bills that fund the government. The other bills that were postponed are Homeland Security, Military Construction-Veterans Affairs, and Legislative Branch. They are normally among the least controversial of the 12 bills.
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The top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., rejected Granger’s explanation for the postponement. In a statement, DeLauro said Republicans realized that the spending cuts laid out in their Limit, Save and Grow Act were “unworkable.”
“The four bills we were supposed to mark up this week were the ‘easy ones,’ cherry-picked so House Republicans did not have to reveal to the American people their plan to pull teachers out of kids’ classrooms and law enforcement off local streets or make our airports and communities less safe,” DeLauro said.
“Before we stepped foot in the committee room, their house of cards has crumbled. It is not clear that they will be able to pass any of the 12 appropriations bills on the House floor if they include the harmful cuts they are proposing.”
The new fiscal year starts Oct. 1.
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