Exclusive–Rep.
David Brat: Speaker Ryan Broke Promise, Set Up GOP for another Budget Crisis, byNeil W. McCabe8/16
The conservative
Virginia congressman who unseated Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a 2014
primary, told Breitbart News Speaker
Paul D. Ryan (R.-Wis.) failed to keep one of his most important commitments to
the House Republican Conference when he refused to restore Regular Order to the
budget process.
“Paul Ryan promised Regular Order as one of his major
promises upon becoming speaker,” said Rep.David Brat (R.-Va.). Brat is a former
chairman of the economic department at Randolph-Macon
College. He earned his PhD in economics at American University.
In addition to his career in academia, he worked with the World Bank and was
appointed to an economic advisory board by then-Virginia governor Timothy
Kaine, who is now running as the Democratic nominee for vice-president.
With less than
three weeks left in the fiscal year, Brat said nobody has any idea what it
going on in regards to the budget.
“Where is the
budget right now?” he asked. “I am being cynical asking the question. It is
somewhere between the Rules Committee and leadership–the point is it is not in
the Budget Committee. There has not been a floor vote, so we are abdicating our
responsibility–there is no discipline.”
Brat, who sits on
the House Budget Committee, said, “Regular Order sounds boring, but its hugely
important, it means the budget stays in the Budget Committee–only–which is
accountable to the American people, which then takes it to a floor vote.”
Regular Order is
the formal process of passing legislation through the House of Representatives,
where bills are passed by the appropriate committee and presented to the House
Rules Committee for a rule governing the floor vote and floor debate. Once the
Rules Committee approves a “rule” for the bill, it is scheduled for debate and
a vote.
Typically, the
debate on the floor is in the framework of the Committee of the Whole House,
which means that for that debate and vote, the committee that passed the bill
is enlarged to include all House members, who then participate within the
context of the original committee with the committee chairman and ranking
member of the minority acting as floor managers through the final vote.
In the case
of the federal budget, there are 12 individual appropriation bills that are
passed separately, but all must be inside the parameters established by the
budget.
Since the
Republicans regained control of the House in the 2010 midterms, the GOP
leadership has been either unwilling or unable to pass all the appropriation
bills in any of the subsequent fiscal years, and the budget process has been
resolved through a patchwork of omnibus funding bills or continuing
resolutions, which carry on the government with the previously approved
spending numbers.
For Capitol Hill
conservatives, the irregular order means that riders passed in committee and
other priorities are jettisoned when GOP leaders negotiate their all-in-one
bills with the White House. When the 2016 funding was resolved, conservative
riders, such as restrictions on funding Planned Parenthood, Sanctuary Cities,
and President Barack Obama’s program to bring 10,000 Syrian refugees into the
country were pulled off the must-pass budget bill and placed on a separate bill
that never went to the president’s desk.
Brat said when the
Consolidated Appropriations Act passed Dec. 18, Ryan told Republicans that it
was a “crap sandwich,” but they had to eat it.
The new spending
bill cannot be any better, he said. “No matter what, it’s going to be a crap
sandwich with extra serving.”
It is a strange
position to be in considering that the Republican Party actually controls both
the House and the Senate.
The economics
professor said he accepts that there is going to be a new continuing
resolution, so the real question is whether it is a short one that carries the
government through the election and into the lame duck session.
Or will it be a
significant one that carries the government into March and the new president’s
term, which Brat and other Capitol Hill conservatives support?
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