Fiscal hawks show a change of heart toward spending bills

WASHINGTON — When House Republicans united last month to back a full-year stopgap funding measure on a mostly party-line vote, 17 of them did something they’d never done before: vote for a spending bill that became law.

In the Senate, Republicans Mike Lee of Utah and Eric Schmitt of Missouri likewise voted for such a bill for the first time. Lee, first elected in 2010, had voted against continuing resolutions and regular annual bills for nearly 15 years before backing the final fiscal 2025 package.

Only Rep. Thomas Massie and Sen. Rand Paul, both of Kentucky, are left standing as Republicans who have never voted for a regular appropriations or stopgap funding law.

President Donald Trump’s backing convinced Republicans to get on board for the law, which included a net cut to overall spending by about $7 billion, including $13 billion slashed from nondefense programs — largely due to earmarks being stripped from the bill.

The changed mindset among fiscal hawks was on full display shortly before the big CR vote last month, when the leader of the rebellious Freedom Caucus, Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., stood alongside House Republican leaders at a news conference to announce his support for the measure.

“This is not your grandfather’s continuing resolution,” Harris said from the podium. “This is a different type of spending bill.”

The bill would help “to keep the Trump administration, Elon Musk and DOGE to continue its promise to the American people to fight fraud, waste and abuse in the federal government and increase its efficiency,” Harris said, referring to the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency.

After years of opposition from hard-line members, Trump’s strong hold over his party has reshuffled the calculus in how the GOP approaches spending bills. And with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., able to muscle the full-year CR through his chamber without the need for Democratic help, Republicans may try to take a similar path this year.

House dynamics

Of the 17 Republicans who voted for year-end spending bills for the first time, only four took office before Joe Biden was president. GOP Reps. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Greg Steube of Florida and Chip Roy of Texas took office in 2019; and Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, came to Congress after a 2018 special election.

“I don’t love CRs,” Roy said during the floor debate on the full-year stopgap measure last month. “But … you have a CR that extends funding at fiscal 2024 levels for the next six months and allows the president to continue what they are doing, shining a light on spending restraint, shining a light on waste, so we can do our job and implement that.”

Five were elected in 2021: Reps. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo.; Andrew Clyde, R-Ga.; Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.; Nancy Mace, R-S.C.; and Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas.

Clyde posted on X, formerly Twitter, on March 11 that while he normally opposes CRs, the full-year bill represented a “paradigm shift,” as it reduces and then freezes spending for the rest of the fiscal year and does not include earmarks.

“This will allow President Trump and his Administration to continue delivering wins for the American people, including DOGE exposing and eliminating waste, fraud and abuse,” said Clyde, a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Eight of the 17 were elected in 2022, when Republicans took back the House majority: Reps. Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, Eric Burlison of Missouri, Wesley Hunt of Texas, Rich McCormick of Georgia, Cory Mills of Florida, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Eli Crane of Arizona and Keith Self of Texas.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., poked fun at Republicans’ change of heart during the stopgap floor debate last month. “I am going to miss the ‘never CR’ group. I mean, they were great, but they are breaking up,” he said.

“Some of them are going solo,” Moskowitz said, referring to Massie’s lone dissenting vote.

Indeed, only Massie, elected during President Barack Obama’s tenure in 2012, retained his record of voting against every enacted temporary or full-year spending bill.

“This is not Trump’s agenda,” Massie said in a video posted March 11 on X. “This is Biden’s spending agenda. The CR extends Biden’s spending levels until the end of the year.”

Massie did vote for one enacted fiscal 2014 spending law, a bill that ensured members of the military would continue to get paid during the 2013 government shutdown. That very narrow bill passed by a vote of 423-0 in the House and by unanimous consent in the Senate.

Leaders of the House Freedom Caucus often vote against spending bills, but Harris, the caucus’ current chairman, and former leaders Scott Perry, R-Pa., and Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., have all supported a stopgap or full-year spending bill at some point.

Biggs had only voted for one CR, the first one he ever considered as a member of Congress: a one-week funding extension near the start of Trump’s first term.

Harris, who is also the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee chairman, provided his support for the first stopgap spending bill Johnson put forward as speaker, in November 2023. That bill included Harris’ proposal to split the spending bills into two batches, with new “laddered” expiration dates.

Perry voted for a three-week extension in late January into early February 2018, during Trump’s first term.

Senate dissenters

The Senate has a smaller group of members who had voted against every spending bill analyzed by CQ Roll Call, which doesn’t include ad hoc emergency supplemental measures. The analysis also only includes roll call votes, and does not count bills passed by unanimous consent or voice vote.

Schmitt voted against every enacted CR or year-end spending bill during his first two years in office, while Lee’s streak dated back to his election in 2010.

Paul, who maintained his record of “no” votes, said during a March 12 appearance on The Hill TV that “once upon a time” all fiscal conservatives would have opposed spending legislation that would increase the deficit.

“There’s nothing conservative about these spending levels. No fiscal conservative should support this,” he said.

Republican senators tend to be more likely than House members to back spending bills, at least occasionally.

While eight other GOP senators who are still in office joined Lee, Paul and Schmitt in voting against the Trump-backed post-election stopgap bill that ran from December 2024 to March, all of them had voted for at least one extension during the past two years.

Those senators are Jim Risch, R-Idaho; Michael D. Crapo, R-Idaho; Ron Johnson, R-Wis.; Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; and John Kennedy, R-La.

Kennedy voted for the September 2024 stopgap law that kicked the appropriations deadline until after the election.

Hawley and Johnson voted for the “laddered” stopgap bill that Harris supported, while Crapo and Risch voted to avoid a partial government shutdown in September 2023.