House Republican budget-writers were psyched.

After weeks of delays and bickering with defense hawks, House Budget Committee Chairwoman Diane Black was set to stick it to her reluctant colleagues and forge ahead with her conservative fiscal blueprint — even without House GOP leadership’s blessing.


But that decision, made in a closed-door Republican budget panel huddle on June 22, fell through after Black delivered that message to GOP leaders, who wanted more time to strike a deal with the broader and deeply divided Republican Conference.

One week later, lawmakers are leaving town for a weeklong recess having once again missed their goal to finish writing a budget — Congress’ most fundamental part of governing — by July 4.

Black, the Tennessee Republican who took the helm of the budget panel six months ago, is the woman in the middle of House Republicans’ budget woes. She’s caught between a committee stocked with fiscal hawks eager to cut the deficit, with whom she sympathizes, and other GOP chairmen loath to go along with her ambitious plan for curbing Pentagon spending and mandatory programs like food stamps.

Much is at stake. President Donald Trump and the GOP-led Congress can’t rewrite the tax code without getting a budget passed for procedural reasons. And failure to pass a budget could be devastating politically for Black, who’s considering a bid for Tennessee governor.

Meanwhile, Black’s conservative budget panel members are increasingly frustrated with the stalemate and worry they’re getting steamrolled. Their anger is targeted not at Black, whom they applaud for scrambling to get everyone on the same page, but at GOP leaders they feel aren’t defending Black’s ideas and their panel’s jurisdiction.

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Many committee members are urging Black to put her foot down, even though she is close with Speaker Paul Ryan, who blessed her bid for the gavel.

“She’s tried to find consensus. … But when it’s time to say, ‘We’ve made the decision, we’re moving’ … and when it’s time to say, ‘No, you’re not going to get exactly what you want,’ she knows how to do that,” said senior budget panel member Tom Cole (R-Okla.).

Another panel member was more blunt while speaking anonymously, calling the back and forth a game of “political chicken.”

“She ought to say: Dammit, this is your f—-ing number,” the lawmaker said. “Do you want the committee to work the committee’s will and do regular order? Or do you want to dictate the process? You can’t have it both ways.”

GOP leadership sources say the standoff is is more between Black and other committee chairmen than between Black and leadership — and they’re merely trying to find consensus. They want Black to finalize a budget that can actually pass on the floor, not just through her committee. And they’re trying to juggle Black’s proposal with frustrated chairmen who feel she’s moving targets for those cuts.

Black supporters say she has already bent over backwards to compromise with lawmakers who aren’t on her committee, with one source saying she’s been “too nice.”

After drafting a budget that would take the extraordinary step of cutting $500 billion in mandatory programs to win over conservative hard-liners, Black lowered her target to $200 billion and increased funds for Pentagon cheerleaders demanding more money.

But her fellow chairmen are still balking, seeing the proposed cuts as too politically risky and putting Black in a tight squeeze as the window for passing a budget grows ever narrower.

“She’s had a very difficult hand and is getting a lot of pressure from leadership, from Armed Services, from Appropriations,” said budget panel Republican Steve Womack (R-Ark.), who also argued that authorizers are playing “turf protection.” “So I commend her for her resolve to trying to get us to a budget.”

Elected in 2010, Black has faced stiff challenges before. The daughter of a World War II veteran and a homemaker, Black grew up in Baltimore public housing and was the first in her family to go to college. Her first husband, an alcoholic, left her. Black became a single mom with three young children and worked as an emergency room nurse.

Black decided to run for the Tennessee statehouse after she remarried and moved to the Volunteer State, founding a successful drug-testing company with her current husband. Since then, she’s never lost an election — except a long-shot bid for speaker of the state House. She was the first woman to vie for the job.

Black rode the tea party wave to Washington and won a prized seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, an unusual feat for a freshman. She told friends at the time, “I am 60 years old; I do not have time to wait.” And she buttonholed every member of the GOP steering committee until she won the spot.

Black grew close with Ryan, a fellow tax-writer and fiscal conservative. He chaired the budget panel on which she also sat, and he became something of a mentor — a relationship that remained strong as he rose through the ranks to become speaker.

That’s one reason leaders looked to Black to take over when Trump plucked Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) for his Cabinet. Black hopscotched other more senior budget members to clinch the gavel with Ryan’s blessing.

The first thing Black heard from her members — who mostly lean toward the right of the conference spectrum — was a desire to pass a real budget. They felt burned by leadership’s refusal last year to put Price’s conservative budget on the floor, though leadership would argue his plan was too far right to pass.

The House ended up approving a “shell budget” in early 2017 that simply allowed for an Obamacare repeal effort without a fully fleshed out fiscal plan. Black was determined not to let that happen again.

But her pitch to take on entitlements started taking arrows from committee chairmen right away.

Agriculture Chairman Mike Conaway (R-Texas), for example, said he didn’t believe there was room to curb farm subsidies or food stamps, two programs conservatives eyed for the chopping block. Aggravated conservatives said Conaway wanted those savings for other types of crop insurance, but farm bill writers have argued they just want to make sure their own bill can eventually pass.

“I’ve been making our case as to why leaving us alone … makes the most sense for the struggles that we face during the farm bill and … the horrible circumstances that production agriculture finds itself in right now,” Conaway said recently.

Rachel Millard, a spokeswoman for the House Agriculture Committee, added that it’s “absolutely not true” that Conaway wasn’t willing to work with Black: “The chairman didn’t say, ‘We’re not going to do any savings.’”

Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) also argued in a brief interview that he should be charged with a smaller share of the cuts — if any — because of his role in passing the Obamacare replacement package earlier this year. His panel is proposing to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid through the repeal effort.

Ryan, according to several budget sources, also encouraged Black to consider instructing committees to find just $1 billion in cuts, allowing chairmen to go above that threshold but not requiring them to do so. That idea, however, was met with scorn by Black’s panel members, including one who called those savings “something of a rounding error.”

The total defense spending number also became a huge sticking point.

Black and other budget panel members wanted to keep the defense spending in line with current law, capped at $549 billion. But House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and his allies demanded $640 billion, which was $37 billion above President Donald Trump’s request.

GOP leaders, meanwhile, were worried about another embarrassing budget flop, which this year would have more dire consequences: no tax reform. Since defense hawks had won standoffs with conservatives in years past, many expected they’d win again.

Black was determined to find a middle ground for both issues. While she and most of her panel members balked at $640 billion for defense, she increased her proposal to $621 billion for the Pentagon and lowered her mandatory cuts to $150 billion for other concerned chairmen.

That wasn’t enough, however. Thornberry continued to demand the higher number. And for a time last week, it looked like Black might lose on defense: Thornberry, House Appropriations Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) and top defense appropriator Kay Granger (R-Texas) were ready to move legislation at the larger, $640 billion number this past Monday.

That’s when Black huddled with her members, who were furious that they were getting pushed out of the process. The budget committee — not defense or appropriations panels — is supposed to set the topline spending numbers, they argued, and it was time to introduce their budget.

Black, however, held out for an agreement, hoping to work with her colleagues to finalize something everyone could accept.

Huddling with Ryan, his top lieutenants and Thornberry, Black agreed to give defense hawks an additional $10 billion in defense funds through a war-fighting account not subject to the budget caps. But Black told leaders she’d need $50 billion more in mandatory cuts for her panel members to back the budget.

Sources said that offer was expected to take and that Black would finally introduce her budget and consider the plan in committee earlier this week.

But the other chairmen scoffed at the bigger cuts, arguing that Black was moving the goalposts. With leadership unable — or unwilling — to twist their arms, Black canceled plans to unveil her budget.

And now she’ll spend the next week still trying to get her colleagues to yes.

Jenny Hopkinson contributed to this report.

