Oklahoma lawmakers weigh in on looming government funding deadline

When both the U.S. House and Senate are back in session in September, lawmakers’ top priority will be trying to work out an agreement to fund the government for the fiscal year starting October 1. There won’t be enough time to fund the government through ‘regular order’ (each chamber passing 12 individual appropriations bills, combining those into 12 joint appropriations bills, and then passing each one in both chambers), but there are still a variety of paths leadership could choose to pursue, most of which would require passage of some form of continuing resolution (CR) to extend funding from the current fiscal year.

In interviews this week, four members of Oklahoma’s congressional delegation commented on the situation and what they expect, or hope, will happen.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK)

“Right now, we're operating under Joe Biden's budget still. We had a continuing resolution earlier in this year that carried us through the end of the fiscal year, September the 30th. We are still under the Biden budget. We want to be able to have a fresh budget look at this. We (the Senate) started bringing appropriation bills up this week, with the military construction/Veterans Affairs bill, with a 90 vote majority that actually voted to be able to move--that's a very strong bipartisan vote. We want to be able to move those appropriation bills through. We have six weeks left of session and we have 12 bills. There's no way we're going to get through all of them, but we need to try to move through as many as we can and then have some sort of continuing resolution for what we didn't finish up. This has been a very, very busy season for us, quite frankly, in the Senate. We’ve done twice as many nominations this time than under the first Trump administration. We've moved a tremendous number of those nominees. We've had more votes in the Senate than any Senate in 35 years. We've had over 450 votes. So there's been a lot of work that's happened in the Senate, in particular. We want to continue to be able to see that work but the next thing on the agenda has got to be all of these appropriation bills so that we can actually have a refresh and be more specific. The continuing resolution just keeps things the way they are. To be able to change the status quo, you’ve got to actually have appropriation bills to be able to change it and be more specific on funding, and find strategic ways to be able to reduce spending.”

 Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK3)

”Well, first off, as we go home for the August work period, by the end of this week, the House Appropriations Committee that my neighbor Tom Cole is chairman of will have passed 10 of the 12 appropriation bills. So, Tom's doing everything he can to get the work done. We have a complicated environment here, and two of the appropriation bills, defense and military construction, have cleared the House on the floor. So we have ten more overall and just a whole bunch more work to do. A number of my ultra conservative friends want to do something called a (full-year) CR. They basically say, let's freeze next year’s spending at this year's level so that we don't increase spending, a shock system to get to a balanced—back towards a lower deficit. The problem of that is if you endorse that strategy, you're saying, well, we're going to continue the Joe Biden administration budget priorities, the Speaker Pelosi budget priorities, instead of following our own priorities. So, I'm one of those folks who believe that when we come back after the 1st of September, we need to work hard. I'm not an appropriator. We need to work hard to get our work done so that spending reflects our priorities, not the former administration's.”

Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK1)

“Well, certainly I, as a person who came to Congress talking about regular order, know you can't have regular order if you're not getting a budget done and the appropriations done on time so that we can have a conference for the Senate. I will say, what's a little bit of encouragement on the Senate side, even with all the work they had to do with the One Big Beautiful Bill, with nominations, with the changing of the majority from the Democrats, Republicans—they’ve actually started pushing some out of committee, which is refreshing to see. But we're going to run out of time. We have about 75 days left here, total time, to get things done. We're just going to run out of time. And so now you see the Democrats fighting on their side, on the Senate side, debating whether they should shut down the government or not. Does that help President Trump? Think about for the American people standpoint…it's very, very interesting to see the Democrats talking about whether or not to shut down the government. A yearlong CR because of their hatred toward President Trump.”

Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-OK2)

“I think we're ultimately gonna be facing a CR, a continuing resolution. That was something that was considered when we were talking about the One Big Beautiful Bill—if we can have a true CR, that is that flatline spending from one year over the next, then the Budget Committee saw that we could save, over a ten-year budget window, $500 billion — that was a consideration. It was not scored and it was not a part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, but it was a consideration for why we moved defense spending into the mandatory side of the ledger on the One Big Beautiful Bill, knowing that would help us keep spending flat on the discretionary side of the ledger. So, I think you're gonna find a lot of Freedom Caucus members that are leaning in — if we can get a real clean CR and that sets us up for a $500 billion savings over the ten year window, in keeping with what we did with the One Big Beautiful Bill, that could be a pathway.”