Bipartisan government funding is at risk of dying in Trump’s Washington

WASHINGTON — For many years, final decisions over how much the U.S. government spends, and how, have required sign-off from leaders of both parties, no matter who controlled the White House or Capitol Hill or the level of polarization.

Now, that last vestige of the bipartisan funding process is at risk of dying after a one-two punch by President Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress.

The “appropriations” process, whereby both parties pass detailed funding bills for various federal agencies every year, has been in a slow decline for decades. But recent moves by the Trump-era GOP to disrupt past funding agreements have accelerated that decline — and, in the view of Democrats and even some weary Republicans, undermined Congress’ power of the purse in deference to the White House.

First, Republicans passed a $300 billion hike in military spending and immigration enforcement as part of Trump’s megabill; and second, they cut $9 billion in domestic money and foreign aid under a rarely used “rescission” process, allowing the GOP to cancel already approved bipartisan spending with a party-line vote.

A Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government or risk a shutdown will test whether a bipartisan deal is still possible, particularly as Trump’s top budget aide publicly calls for a more partisan approach.

House Republicans have undermined the bipartisan path for years by slamming the resulting deals as “swamp” creations by a “uniparty” that is addicted to spending. Now, GOP lawmakers in both chambers are going it alone, suggesting they’ll bring more rescissions packages to undo past bipartisan spending agreements because the existing process is failing.

“We don’t have an appropriations process. It’s broken. It’s been broken for a while,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

He said Congress will likely fall back on continuing resolutions, which largely maintain the status quo, and rescission packages for the remainder of Trump’s presidency.

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a senior appropriator, said the once-respected government funding process has “disappeared,” calling the latest rescissions package “a step backwards.”

“It’s basically saying: No matter what you decide on, the president is going to be able to change the bill, even for money that’s been appropriated,” Durbin said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, insist the process is alive and well. They will test that theory this week as Thune plans to bring at least one — if not more — appropriations bills to the Senate floor. He has argued that the $9 billion cut hits a tiny portion of the federal budget and shouldn’t dissuade Democrats from working toward a deal.

“I would hope, at least for the functioning of our government, that they would be willing to work with us on some things,” Thune said Wednesday on Fox News. “They haven’t been so far.”

But even some GOP proponents of the bill admit it adds to the challenges.

“The rescission package — of course, I understand that could complicate things,” said Rep. Robert Aderholt of Alabama, a senior Republican on the House Appropriations Committee.

Vought weighs in

Just after the Senate overcame objections in both parties to approve the $9 billion spending-cut bill requested by Trump, a comment from White House budget director Russell Vought dropped like a bomb on Capitol Hill.

“The appropriations process has to be less bipartisan,” Vought told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast Thursday. “It’s not going to keep me up at night, and I think will lead to better results, by having the appropriations process be a little bit partisan.”

He added that more rescission packages would be coming.

The backlash was fierce. Senate Republicans responsible for crafting the government funding bills were taken aback by his candor.

“Mr. Vought’s lack of respect and apparent lack of understanding of how Congress operates is baffling, because he’s served in government before,” Collins told NBC News.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said Vought “disrespects” the appropriations process in Congress with his “dismissive” comments.

“I think he thinks that we are irrelevant,” she said.

And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Thursday called on Trump to “fire Russell Vought immediately, before he destroys our democracy and runs the country into the ground.”

The series of clashes escalates tensions leading up to the fall deadline, with top Democrats warning ahead of the vote that they would have little incentive to provide the 60 votes to cut a deal.

“It is absurd to expect Democrats to play along with funding the government if Republicans are just going to renege on a bipartisan agreement by concocting rescissions packages behind closed doors that can pass with only their votes,” Schumer warned in a recent speech.

The debate over the demise of individual lawmakers getting to dictate where federal funding is allocated came to a head during a recent meeting of the Senate Appropriations Committee, with many senators arguing that the work they were doing in that moment may just be overridden by congressional leadership and the president.

“The one thing we all agree on is the appropriations process is broken,” former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., lamented, describing how during his 18 years leading the GOP conference he helped oversee a shift away from government funding levels being decided by committees and instead being negotiated by only the highest levels of leadership and the White House.

“I concluded our failure to pass our bills empower every president, regardless of party, because I’ve been in those discussions at the end, the big four and the guy with the pen, and that makes all of our requests irrelevant,” McConnell said.

Collins has repeatedly blamed the decline of the process on Schumer’s refusal to put appropriations bills on the Senate floor. That has also been a slow-moving trend: McConnell and former Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also short-circuited the process on the floor when in charge.

Rising partisanship has weakened committees broadly and placed more power in the hands of leadership. In the context of government funding, that led to “omnibus” spending bills and continuing resolutions — or CRs — negotiated by party leaders and jammed through Congress, often with an impending deadline to pressure holdouts to fall in line quickly.

But House Republicans raised hell, torching the massive bills negotiated behind closed doors as a betrayal to their constituents. In recent years, they have successfully steered their leadership away from that approach. And it leaves few options going forward.

‘What the math tells us’

Durbin, who is retiring after a 30-year Senate career, reminisced about when the process was at the peak of its powers — last century. The last time Congress completed it through “regular order” was in the 1990s.

“There was a time when we called 12 appropriation bills to the floor, open for amendment! Can you imagine that?” Durbin said. “I remember. And you had to do your job in the committee. You had to have a subcommittee lined up on a bipartisan basis, a full committee lined up on a bipartisan basis. And the committee stood together. And you could find enough to support it to pass something. That, I think, really reflected the best of the Senate.”

He attributed the change to the growing discord between the parties and the declining “reputation of the Appropriations Committee,” although he credited Collins and Vice Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., with trying to restore the bipartisan spirit of the panel.

Collins, notably, is on an island as the only GOP senator who voted against both attempts to rewrite government funding — in the megabill and rescissions package. Collins is also up for re-election next year in a Democratic-leaning state that Trump lost in 2024.

Sarah Binder, a political scientist at George Washington University and the Brookings Institution, said the megabill’s changes to GOP spending priorities “undermines the rough parity between defense and nondefense discretionary spending that until recently made bipartisan deals possible.”

She added, “The Trump OMB’s aggressive impoundments of enacted appropriations severely threatens Congress’ power of the purse and with it the authority and expertise of and oversight by appropriators.”

Yet even as Republicans find new ways to go around the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, Thune has promised he won’t abolish the filibuster. He distanced himself from Vought’s remarks.

“Well, that runs contrary to what the math tells us around here,” he said. “So, we need 60 on approps bills. And it’s going to take 60 to fund the government.”

The path to a new funding law is murky, at best.

And Collins, for now, maintains confidence in the bipartisan appropriations process. When asked if she has any concerns about its future, Collins told NBC News, “None whatsoever.”