House Rejected HR 8772 – FY 2025 Legislative Spending Bill

On Thursday, the House took up HR 8772, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2025. After agreeing to one amendment and rejecting three others, the House rejected the bill by a vote of 205 to 213 with 15 members (8 R’s and 7 D’s) not voting. Ten Republicans voted Nay and three Democrats voted Yay.

One of the Republicans voting against the bill, Rep Clyde (R,GA), objected to the bill in floor debate (H4594) because of §214 of the bill violates the provisions of the 27^th Amendment that require any changes made to congressional pay will not take effect in the session in which the changes were enacted. That was the only Republican voice raised in the opposition to the bill during the general debate. Interestingly, there were no Republican votes against the rule for the consideration of this bill in the Rules Committee.

This failure to pass this bill shows that the Republican House is going to continue to have problems getting the 12 spending bills to the President. There is going to be substantial opposition in the Senate to many of the provisions (and the spending amounts) in the House bills, but if the leadership cannot even get bills through the house they nominally (VERY nominally) control, they will have the same problems they had last year forcing the Senate to acquiesce to any of their demands. To be fair, no one who has watched Washington for the last couple of years expected any different.

NOTE: This post is a little late, but the Congressional Record for Thursday was just published today. That combined with the Florida vacation the wife and I took earlier this week, are the reasons for the delay in this discussion.