WASHINGTON, D.C. – All eyes are on the US Senate, looking to see if they’ll pass a temporary funding bill to avoid a government shutdown. Senate Democrats are in a dilemma on how they should approach this bill. Many Democrats see it as too risky to oppose this legislation which would essentially shut down the government, but if they approve it, they also see that way as allowing the President to continue to slash the federal government.
“We did our job today,” said Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R- LA) following the House vote on the continuing resolution.
With the exception of one Democrat and one Republican crossing party lines, the House barely passed a short-term stopgap measure. It would continue to fund the government through September 30th. The measure essentially keeps the same spending levels as last year except for a small increase in military spending and cut nondefense programs by 13 billion.
“It’s a little perplexing, I don’t want to say hypocritical because I want to be nicer, but it’s perplexing that the Democrats are willing to shut down the government rather than say ‘ok this is fine for now; now let’s go back to work,’” said Rep. Dan Meuser (R- PA). “I mean the alternative was to shut down the government.”
The fate of this bill now rests in the Senate. Democrats are in a politically risky decision because they don’t want to be blamed for a shutdown if they oppose the legislation but some see that approving the measure would aid President Trump’s and Elon Musk’s agenda in slashing the federal government.
Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin (D- MI) said earlier this week she would “withhold” her vote until they get assurance from the administration the money will be spent the way lawmakers intend.
“I’m looking for some [inaudible] that is going to follow the constitution and use the money as it’s appropriated and then not take American data in the meantime,” said Sen. Slotkin.
Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman (D- PA) appears he will vote for the measure.
“You can either vote for the CR and you don’t have to- that means you don’t agree with all of it, it’s just that we agree that you don’t want to shut the government down and now do you want to risk having the economy move into a recession I’m not willing to do that thing,” said Sen. Fetterman. “And now if you claim that we want to protect the government by shutting it down, that absolutely will impact millions and millions and millions of people. That’s the choice that we have to make.”
The deadline to get this done is in a few days before the government shuts down.
