The House of Representatives approved a stopgap continuing resolution on a 336 to 95 bipartisan vote to keep the U.S. government funding into January with 80 percent remaining funded into February.
New Mexico Democratic Rep. Melanie Stansbury discussed the continuing resolution during her bi-monthly press call from a room just outside the House following the vote.
“We just passed a House continuing resolution to continue government funding so that New Mexican families do not have to worry over the next several weeks and months, whether or not they’re going to be able to pay their bills and the government’s going to remain open,” Stansbury said. “So this extends funding to January and February for most of our federal programs, and it keeps them at the existing funding level.”
House Democrats have been working for months to avoid a government shutdown and that there would be neither further cuts to programs nor any “harmful policy,” Stansbury said.
The House continued work on an appropriations bill to fund the Labor, Education and Health and Human Services Departments following the stopgap vote.
It had been debating and voting on amendments most of the Tuesday House session.
The stopgap was announced by House Speaker Mike Johnson on Saturday.
The plan is a two-part continuing resolution aiming to keep the government open while Congress works to finish the appropriations process.
“This two-step continuing resolution is a necessary bill to place House Republicans in the best position to fight for conservative victories,” Johnson said in a statement Saturday. “ The bill will stop the absurd holiday-season omnibus tradition of massive, loaded up spending bills introduced right before the Christmas recess.”
The CR is a stopgap funding bill that will keep the government open until January.
The Senate is expected to pass the CR while work continues on budget and appropriations legislation to fund the government through the current fiscal year which began Sept. 1.
Chaos across Congress
While the House passed the stopgap to keep the government open was happening, other issues came up including members of the Republican Caucus either being accused of elbowing a fellow Republican in the kidney or asking the president of the Teamsters to a fistfight.
During a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on corporate greed, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma, and Teamsters President Sean O’Brien got into an argument wherein both men spoke of wanting to fight one another.
Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, tried to call the meeting to order with Mullin and O-Brien agreeing to have a cup of coffee.
Over in the House, Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tennessee, accused former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-California, of elbowing him in the ribs, NBC News reports.
An allegation to which McCarthy responded that “If I’d kidney punched him, he’d be on the ground.”
Burchett was one of the Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy from the speakership in October.
In Stansbury’s press call, she said that she has seen House Republicans standing on the Democratic side due to their wish not to interact with their fellow Republicans.
“I do not caucus with the Republicans so I can’t speak to the conversations that are had inside of their own caucus room… The level of discontent within the GOP caucus is extraordinarily high,” Stansbury said. “They’re fighting with each other. We see it in the hallways and we hear it in the elevators… So it’s a pretty ugly situation over there right now. So it’s very possible that, you know, something will happen to the new Speaker, but that’ll really be up to the House GOP conference.”
Economic omnishambles
Stansbury was a budget analyst who at one time worked for the White House Office of Management and Budget under President Barack Obama.
She remembers the 2013 government shutdown and was a furloughed employee then.
“It’s enormously disruptive to the U.S. economy. As I’m sure many of you are aware, just today, you know, economic stats came out that showed that the U.S. economy’s inflation is finally starting to stabilize,” Stansbury said. “And that’s really important for the economic wellbeing of our communities and one of the biggest destabilizations we could do to our economy is to not have reliable and efficient budgeting.”
Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the U.S.’s credit rating Friday from stable to negative due to higher interest rates and the nation’s deficits. Meaning that the U.S.’s fiscal risks are outweighing its strengths.
“In the context of higher interest rates, without effective fiscal policy measures to reduce government spending or increase revenues, Moody’s expects that the U.S.’ fiscal deficits will remain very large, significantly weakening debt affordability,” Moody’s assessment states. “Continued political polarization within U.S. Congress raises the risk that successive governments will not be able to reach consensus on a fiscal plan to slow the decline in debt affordability.”
The fiscal instability due to political instability includes McCarthy being removed from the speakership and a replacement not being installed for three weeks and the debt ceiling debacle in May and June when the U.S. nearly defaulted on its loans.