WASHINGTON — Alabama Republicans supported a short-term spending measure Tuesday to fund government operations through Dec. 4, while nearly all House Democrats, including Alabama’s members, opposed the bill.
House Republicans hope to prevent a government shutdown ahead of the midterms by passing a continuing resolution nearly two months before the Sept. 30 deadline. The House approved the funding bill by a vote of 220-205.
“The last thing you want to do is to shut down the government,” U.S. Rep. Dale Strong, R-Huntsville, a member of the Appropriations Committee, told Alabama Daily News. “We got too many good things going on. Move forward with it. This is the option that I see on the table right now.”
Broadly, the stopgap measure will keep funding levels flat from the current fiscal year.
“This continuing resolution gives Congress time to finish the appropriations process without adding new spending or expanding the size of government,” U.S. Rep. Barry Moore, R-Enterprise, said in a statement.
During his weekly press conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called it a “totally clean” and “very simple” stopgap bill.
“There’s no maneuver, there’s nothing other than a simple extension of current funding levels,” he said.
Most Democrats objected to the bill, with the top Democrat House appropriator, Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, arguing there was no bipartisan input on the bill before it was “hastily” released last Friday ahead of this week’s vote.
House Democrats also objected to funding for Border Patrol in the measure, which a Republican party-line bill has already funded through the rest of Trump’s term.
“The House Republican continuing resolution gives the Trump administration even more power over the federal budget and fails to block funding for Donald Trump’s violent mass deportation machine,” House Democratic leadership said in a statement.
Republicans plan to continue advancing the 12 individual spending bills throughout the fall, while the continuing resolution funds departments in the interim.
“This clean continuing resolution does not stop appropriations work from continuing, it just removes the threat of a shutdown at the end of the fiscal year,” U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Haleyville, a senior appropriator, said.
So far, the House has passed three full-year spending bills, but the Senate has yet to advance any measures this year as Republicans and Democrats have yet to agree on topline funding levels.
The House is set to leave town for a five-week August recess on Thursday, leaving them 15 legislative days upon their return before the new fiscal year begins.
The Senate also aims to advance a bipartisan government funding measure before the upper chamber leaves for its extended recess in a couple of weeks.
But if bipartisan consensus isn’t reached, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Senate Republicans could use a budget resolution, after it passes the House, as a vehicle to fund the government through reconciliation, bypassing Democratic votes.
“It’s a possibility that if necessary we can pull that budget resolution passed by the House and use it to fund government,” Thune told reporters.
With the continuing resolution passed, House Republicans will turn their attention Wednesday to adopting that $95 billion budget framework that would provide funding for the Pentagon, farm aid and elections measures.