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In today’s edition … Trump lags behind Biden in campaign cash reserves while legal bills mount … Biden’s stutter surges into the presidential campaign … but first …

On the Hill

Why Congress is having trouble funding the government

When House Republicans took the majority last year, they promised a return to a more simple, streamlined and efficient process to fund the government.

They promised to pass individual spending bills. And they promised to get them done on time.

Well, it didn’t work out that way.

Congress is nearly six months into the fiscal year and hasn’t fully funded the government for the entire year. Lawmakers are working to pass the final tranche — about 70 percent of discretionary funding, including for Defense and Homeland Security — by the end of the week. House Appropriations released the bills early this morning, but they must still be voted on by the House and then the Senate. They passed the other six funding bills just two weeks ago.

The reasons for the backlog are many. 

1. After then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) reached a deal on funding levels with President Biden in June, conservatives revolted because they said the deal didn’t cut enough. That forced House Republicans back to the drawing board, shedding months of precious time. 
2. Republicans crafted bills that were so conservative that they couldn’t find enough lawmakers in their own party to vote for them. 
3. A group of House Republicans ousted McCarthy as speaker in October, and it took three weeks to elect a new one.
4. The new speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), had to get up to speed — no easy feat for someone who had never served in the upper echelons of leadership.

It’s led to intraparty finger-pointing in which centrist Republicans are blaming those on the right for making unreasonable demands despite rarely voting for funding bills. 

The hard-right Republicans are blaming their centrist colleagues and leadership for agreeing to bills that they say don't cut enough and don't insert enough conservative policies. 

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) blamed the “Uniparty,” a derogatory term to describe Republicans who vote on spending bills and other bills with Democrats. 

• “They’re flexing their muscle again, and unfortunately the speaker is letting them do it,” Roy said.

Conservatives are also complaining that Johnson is likely to bypass the conference’s rules requiring votes on bills no earlier than 72 hours after their release, designed to allow time for people to read legislation. 

Senate Republican discontent

While most of the holdup has been in the House, the Senate has not been drama-free. The group of Senate Republicans who align themselves with the conservative House Freedom Caucus has been highly critical of the process. 

The Senate Appropriations Committee, led by Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), passed all 12 funding bills out of committee on a bipartisan basis by July —  a rare feat in the modern Senate. Conservative senators blocked and slowed down the few funding bills that received a vote on the floor, which critics say gave leadership ammunition to bypass the process and negotiate spending bills among themselves.

When asked what he says to fellow Republicans who criticize his frequent objections to voting for funding bills, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told us he “would vote for reasonable appropriations bills.”

GOP Senate meeting

Johnson hosted a meeting yesterday for the Senate Republican conference to discuss its priorities ahead of its election of a leader to take over when Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) steps aside this year.

While appropriations was not the central theme, it was brought up by members who are frustrated by the process, including a lack of input and the way amendments are handled. 

• “Some folks talked about wanting to get back to something like regular order — to have input,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said of the meeting. 

Bodes poorly for next year

While this year doesn’t represent the latest that Congress has ever funded the government, it is close. In 2022, lawmakers passed funding bills on March 15; in 2018, they passed the final bills on March 23. 

And in 2017, they didn't fund the government until May 5. 

This year’s delays put government funding on a tough trajectory for the next fiscal year, which starts on Oct. 1.

President Biden was already a month late in sending his budget to Congress. Per the Budget Control Act of 1974, it should be submitted by the first Monday in February. Congress is supposed to pass all funding bills by June 30  — something that definitely won’t happen this year. 

• Only four times since 1977 has Congress passed all appropriations bills by the beginning of the fiscal year.

Further complicating fiscal year 2025 funding bills (other than the fact that fiscal year 2024 bills aren’t done), this is an election year, which means there is less incentive and less time for members to stay in Washington and work. Eager to campaign, lawmakers rarely spend significant time in Washington from July until Election Day.  

As Bobby Kogan, a veteran budget staffer on the Hill and at the Office of Management and Budget who now works at the liberal Center for American Progress, put it: “You can imagine people will wait until the outcome of the election to see if their marginal power structure changes” before funding the government. 

Most Republican lawmakers are pessimistic about the outlook this year. “It’ll be the same as every single year, which is, we’ll be late to the game, and we’ll be trying to do minibuses, and we will be arguing,” Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) said. 

Rep. Fitzpatrick says Netanyahu should address Congress

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) drafted a letter to Speaker Johnson encouraging him to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress. 

In the draft letter, obtained by The Washington Post, Fitzpatrick writes that the invitation would send a strong message about the United States’ “unwavering commitment to Israel’s long-term security” after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) recent criticism of Netanyahu and some Democrats’ calls for a cease-fire in Gaza. 

Schumer, who is Jewish, gave an impassioned speech in which he slammed Netanyahu for the war and called for new elections in Israel. Netanyahu spoke to Senate Republicans at a closed-door meeting Wednesday and called Schumer’s comments “outrageous.” 

Fitzpatrick has also been working on a military aid package for Israel and Ukraine, which has been stalled in the House for more than a month. 

Programming Note

Don’t miss it! Today at 9 a.m., Washington Post Live hosts “The Futurist Summit: The New Age of Tech.” Leigh Ann will sit down with Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) about efforts to regulate AI, their views on TikTok and much more. The event will also feature interviews with DARPA Director Stefanie Tompkins, OpenAI Vice President Anna Makanju, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and others. Register here to watch.

At the White House

Biden cancels more student loans

This morning Biden announced the cancellation of another 78,000 student loans. It’s the latest in a piecemeal approach to his student loan cancellation effort since the Supreme Court blocked him from issuing relief to all borrowers. 

The latest debt relief will eliminate student loans of public service workers, including teachers, firefighters and nurses through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, bringing the number of Americans whose loans have been canceled to more than 4 million. That’s a small slice of the 43 million Americans with student loans. The Supreme Court ruled last year that Biden overreached when he tried to issue a blanket relief plan. Since then, the administration has been finding pockets of borrowers whose debt cancellation wouldn’t violate the law. 

An email from the president will go out to the latest tranche of qualified borrowers next week. 

Biden’s stutter surges into the presidential campaign

Our colleague Matt Viser takes a look at how Biden’s speech impediment has become a key fixture on the campaign trail. While Donald Trump mocks the president’s stutter, Biden embraces it. Here’s an excerpt: 

“As Donald Trump has mocked Biden in recent weeks by falsely claiming that he is stuttering during his speeches and parodied the purported stammer on occasion, Biden has been relying on a longtime centerpiece of his personal and political biography, embracing it to sell himself as the candidate of compassion for the 2024 presidential rematch,” Matt writes.  

• “The election may ultimately be decided by sweeping issues like the economy, immigration, abortion and democracy. But the early phase has also been marked by a discussion, in ways both crass and subtle, of a far more personal topic — Biden’s stutter. That back-and-forth reflects the candidates’ sharply differing views of disability and struggle, and their role in a divided political culture that can reward ridicule more than acceptance.”
• “Biden and his aides talk about the stutter in complex and even contradictory ways. Biden has often portrayed it as something he fully conquered as a child, a story of resilience and triumph. At other times, aides have highlighted the stammer to explain Biden’s verbal stumbles, framing them as a function of a disability rather than age.”
• “And for Trump, Biden is not the first person whose disability he has made fun of. In 2015, the then-candidate derisively imitated New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a congenital condition affecting joints known as arthrogryposis. Trump has denied knowing about Kovaleski’s condition. As president, Trump resisted appearing alongside wounded veterans, as reported by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser in their book ‘The Divider’ and later confirmed by former White House chief of staff John F. Kelly. ‘I don’t want them,’ Trump said. ‘It doesn’t look good for me.’ Trump has disputed Kelly’s account. In a 2015 television interview, Trump responded to criticism from the late columnist Charles Krauthammer, who used a wheelchair, by calling him ‘a guy that can’t buy a pair of pants.’”

The campaign

Trump lags behind Biden in campaign cash reserves while legal bills mount

: Biden’s presidential campaign continues to demonstrate a clear cash advantage over Trump’s, reporting $71 million in cash on hand to Trump’s $33.5 million — more than double his rival’s reserves, our colleagues Maeve Reston and Clara Ence Morse report. “Biden’s campaign widened the gap from the end of January, when it led Trump’s campaign $56 million to $30.5 million.” 

• “The reports underscore the extent to which Trump’s legal troubles are putting a strain on his campaign. Save America, the political action committee that the Trump campaign has been using to pay the legal bills for the former president and many of his associates, spent more than it raised in February — with the vast majority of its spending going to legal costs. The Save America PAC reported about $4 million in cash on hand at the end of February. It spent about $7 million over the same period, including $5.6 million paid to lawyers. Since the start of this year, Save America has spent $8.5 million on legal bills, and the Trump campaign has spent $1.8 million on such costs.”

*Note: The Federal Election Commission reports filed on Wednesday do not paint a full picture of the comparative strength of the two campaigns because several of the groups raising money for each presumptive nominee will not disclose their latest totals with the FEC until April, Maeve and Clara report.

The Media

Must reads

From The Post: 

• Two years after start of Ukraine war, Russian titanium keeps flowing to West. By Adam Taylor.
• Impeachment inquiry appears on ice as House GOP tries to wrangle support. By Jacqueline Alemany.
• Texas immigration law is on hold. But the confusion is still mounting. By Arelis R. Hernández and Patrick Svitek.
• White House: Attack on judicial nominee is ‘Islamophobic smear campaign.’ By Tobi Raji.
• In Ohio, Republicans keep taking the tougher road to the Senate. By Paul Kane.
• Bankruptcy is one way out of Trump’s financial jam. He doesn’t want to take it. By Jonathan O’Connell and Josh Dawsey.
• ICYMI: ‘Very, very troubling’: Judges, lawyers flummoxed by Judge Cannon. By Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein.

From across the web:

• Angela Chao, Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law, was drunk when she drove into pond, police say. By Christopher Weber.
• Appeals court shaped by Trump is at center of Texas border debate. By the New York Times’s Mattathias Schwartz.

Viral

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