December 08, 2015 12:43 PM UTC

House Republicans Still Battling Each Other Over Budget

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• by: Colorado Pols

The so-called “House Freedom Caucus,” which counts Colorado Rep. Ken Buck (R-Greeley) among its members, is doing its damnedest to muck up the budget discussions in Washington D.C. As Politico reports today, the Freedumb Caucus is dead-set on holding the budget hostage — even if it means waiting until 2016 to approve an omnibus spending bill:

With government funding set to run out in just three days, divisions within the House Republican Conference are surfacing yet again.

Speaker Paul Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy are determined to wrap up a yearlong spending bill this month, but the conservative House Freedom Caucus is starting to suggest pushing the spending fight into next year. They say the holiday season time crunch is hurting the GOP’s leverage in negotiations with Democrats.

The government is slated to run out of spending authority on Friday and Republican and Democratic leaders are at an impasse over an omnibus-spending bill. At issue are several policy riders, including a proposal that would increase scrutiny of Iraqi and Syrian migrants. House conservatives are pushing to include that language in the spending bill, but the White House is opposed to it, despite widespread support on Capitol Hill.

Is this just another last-minute hissy fit from Tea Party Republicans, or are they really prepared to draw a line in the sand on the budget discussions? As Chris Cillizza explains in “The Fix,” the 2010 “Tea Party” wave year that swept Republicans into power also created an ideology immune to compromise:

Yes, the 63-seat Republican gain made Boehner speaker. But it also put him in charge of a majority that didn’t see the strategic fight with Democrats at all like he did. The tea party folks — led  by the likes of Labrador, Ohio’s Jim Jordan and others — rejected the idea that compromise was the only outcome of major legislative fights. Giving in — at all — meant surrender. And if Democrats knew that Republicans wouldn’t push beyond the long-accepted boundaries of congressional conduct, they could simply wait out the GOP until the party eventually gave in.

Think of it this way: Boehner was okay with taking a hostage to use as a negotiating tool. But he was never going to shoot the hostage. The Freedom Caucus view was — and is — that you MUST be willing to shoot the hostage — and make sure the other side knows that — going into the negotiation. [Pols emphasis]

Anybody still wondering why Paul Ryan was so reluctant to stand for Speaker of the House?