Freedom Caucus draws first battle lines in election year government shutdown fight

The ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus is signaling it will not help Congress avoid a government shutdown next month unless a short-term spending bill is linked to a bill requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.

The House GOP rebels are also calling for a short-term spending plan to extend until the new year, at which point allies of former President Trump hope he will be in the White House again. 

That puts the group in direct opposition to their more traditional GOP colleagues, including House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., who suggested last month that he would want to finish the government funding process by the end of 2024.

With just six of 12 individual appropriations bills having passed the House, and none yet in the Senate, it's all but certain that a short-term extension of the current year's funding levels will be needed to keep the government open past the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

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The House Freedom Caucus is already planning to throw a wrench in House GOP leaders' government funding talks. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Even senior Republicans like Cole have admitted that a short-term bill, known as a continuing resolution (CR), will be needed to avoid federal offices shuttering and potentially thousands of federal employees getting furloughed. But the Monday morning House Freedom Caucus statement, released while lawmakers are in the middle of a six-week-long recess from Washington, shows the beginnings of a potentially messy fiscal fight.

In a new statement obtained by Fox News Digital, the House Freedom Caucus said that "House Republicans should return to Washington to continue the work of passing all 12 appropriations bills to cut spending and advance our policy priorities … If unsuccessful, in the inevitability that Congress considers a Continuing Resolution, government funding should be extended into early 2025 to avoid a lame duck omnibus that preserves Democrat spending and policies well into the next administration."

"Furthermore, the Continuing Resolution should include the SAVE Act – as called for by President Trump – to prevent non-citizens from voting to preserve free and fair elections in light of the millions of illegal aliens imported by the Biden-Harris administration over."

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They want negotiators to attach a Trump-backed elections bill to any short-term funding patch. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The House passed the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act last month with five Democrats voting with every single House Republican in passing the bill. 

But it's opposed by the White House and likely will not get a vote in the Democratically-held Senate, meaning its inclusion in a final CR would be fighting an uphill battle.

Cole told reporters last month that he would prefer something with wider bipartisan appeal, like supplemental disaster relief funding, to be attached to a CR instead.

"I haven't really thought about it yet, it’s not a big deal to me. But again, if it can't pass the Senate, it isn't going to be an effective CR," Cole said when asked about the SAVE Act. "So a real CR, you know, I'm more interested actually in disaster relief. That's something that I think the two sides can come together on."

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The 118th Congress has seen historic levels of discord over the issue of government spending, with GOP rebels clamoring for House Republican leadership to wield their razor-thin majority to force through conservative policy priorities or risk a shutdown. 

But leaders on both sides have signaled that they want to avoid the political ramifications of a shutdown, especially one this close to the November election. 

Last year's spending fight saw the ouster of ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., by a handful of his own GOP colleagues after he helped pass a "clean" short-term funding extension in September of last year.

Elizabeth Elkind is a politics reporter for Fox News Digital leading coverage of the House of Representatives. Previous digital bylines seen at Daily Mail and CBS News.

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