In a tense couple days on Capitol Hill, U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles has broken with the Republican party to join a small group of hardline conservatives in blocking government spending bills. The deadlock has sent the United States hurtling toward a government shutdown that could decimate the country’s finances, interrupt federal services and leave government employees temporarily without paychecks.
On Friday afternoon, Ogles joined Democrats in voting against a compromise bill offered by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The so-called “stopgap” bill would fund a smattering of government services favored by the right, specifically border detention camps, military functions and disaster relief. It includes across-the-board spending cuts of about 30 percent, drawing uniform opposition from the chamber’s 211 Democrats (including Steve Cohen, Tennessee's sole Democratic representative) as well as the 21 Republicans who include Ogles and East Tennessee's U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett. Republican Nashville Reps. Mark Green and John Rose voted with their party.
Burchett has long taken issue with the procedural way in which House leadership of both parties strong-arms spending bills through the chamber.
“I am absolutely disgusted with the way our government spends money,” said Burchett Friday, speaking to an empty gallery moments before a House recess. “This out-of-control spending, it needs to change. Many of my Republican colleagues are going to fight for that change to happen today.”
Rather than haggle over individual appropriations bills, the House regularly passes continuing resolutions that extend previously passed spending bills. The process creates very little space for rank-and-file members to affect government spending, which is tied up in huge omnibus bills crafted by House leadership.
“There continues to be this push for a continuing resolution, which frustrates me,” Ogles told right-wing media site the Tennessee Star on Monday. "We said we’d pass 12 appropriations bills, and we should pass 12 appropriations bills. If that means the government shuts down for four or five days, that’s fine.”
In November, Tennessee voters replaced moderate Democrat Jim Cooper with Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles, a Republican who identifies with far-right cultural politics and anarchist libertarian economics. State lawmakers cracked Democratic-voting Nashville into three Middle Tennessee districts in 2022, all now represented by conservative Republicans. Ogles has torpedoed his reputation among Republicans since going to Washington, choosing to ally with a splinter group of far-right outcasts led by Matt Gaetz. The splinter group has repeatedly fought McCarthy’s leadership and jeopardized Republican control of the chamber.
Gaetz, a Florida Republican who escaped a federal investigation in February when prosecutors decided that his romantic relationship with a 17-year-old didn’t qualify as sex trafficking, led a small band of conservatives including Ogles in opposing McCarthy’s election as speaker in January. He previously sought a preemptive pardon from former President Donald Trump related to the sex trafficking investigation.Â
If McCarthy does not deliver a legislative compromise by Saturday at midnight, the U.S. government will not have any legal funding mechanism. Government officials have begun notifying federal workers that they may lose pay. Millions of Americans, including women and children who rely on supplemental nutrition programs, may lose access to government support.
