Conservative Republicans are calling for a busy lame-duck session of Congress between now and Jan. 3, when Democrats will retake the majority in—and control of—the House.
“Republicans still have an opportunity to do what we said,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal.
“We should fund the border security wall, pass a farm bill that requires able-bodied adults to work if they receive welfare, and keep working to hold the FBI and [Justice Department] accountable for their misconduct during and after the 2016 election,” Jordan said.
Funding for the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies runs out Dec. 7, and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Thursday that he would like to see the Republican Congress do what it can to balance the budget before Democrats take over the House in the 116th Congress after the first of the year.
“I would like to see my conference actually pass my resolution to balance the budget,” Biggs said.
“We’ve got seven portions of the budget, seven bills you are going to see wrapped into one,” which will probably come out around Dec. 7, he said.
“I’m just so tired of us saying that we really care about balancing the budget, but we are not going to be able to touch that for two years,” Biggs said.
The Arizona lawmaker said he thinks House Republicans should work overtime to protect the gains they have made from attacks once House Democrats take back power.
Congress needs to be willing to come here and work next week, through Thanksgiving. I think we need to work the last two weeks in December or three weeks, or whatever they are going to do, to try to get out super-early.
I think we need to do all of that and to be working to get this stuff done, especially if you believe like I do … that Democrats, first of all, their agenda is going to be to try to eviscerate anything that we were able to accomplish with regard to regulatory reform, economic bills, legislation that we got through, like the tax cuts.
Biggs said other lame-duck priorities should be border wall legislation and funding that does not include amnesty for illegal immigrants.
“My bill I introduced in either late July or early August is actually a pretty clean ‘build the wall’ with funding in it, and I think that needs to happen,” he said. “What you are going to see, I am afraid, is an effort to kind of give a nod to building the wall. What I am hearing is, they want to use the entire Goodlatte framework for that.”
Read the full story from The Daily Signal
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