Senate Passes House’s Stopgap Funding Bill
Crisis averted…
There is a temporary spending bill that will now keep the government operational through December 20.
This is far from the funding that everyone wanted, but at least it prevents a government shutdown before the election.
Doing What Has to Be Done
In less than a week, the government would have been shut down if the House had not sent funding legislation over to the Senate for a vote.
It is a scaled-down funding bill that passed the House with a 341-82 vote and the Senate with a 78-18 vote.
There was resistance from Republicans in the House, as we expected, with all 82 “no” votes coming from the GOP caucus.
We knew Johnson was going to have to rely on Democrats to get his passed, and he did what he had to do in order to avert a shutdown.
Now the question becomes how will the most vocal members of the party respond as well as Donald Trump.
Donald Trump was pushing for the SAVE Act to be attached, but it never would have made it through the Senate, and there is no way Biden would have signed it, and Johnson knew this.
He also knew that if the government was shut down, it would be the GOP that would take the blame in the media.
In addition to the government funding, there is also $231 million earmarked for the Secret Service to get its act together.
By most accounts, the money is there, but the manpower is not, but that has never stopped Congress from throwing unnecessary money at a problem before.
After the bill passed, Johnson assured everyone that he will not support a Christmas omnibus spending bill as we have seen in the past.
In previous years, these massive spending bills have been rammed through right before the break, and you know nobody is reading them (most of the time, the bills were released and voted on in a matter of hours).
On this, Johnson stated, “I want to assure everyone, and I’ve said this multiple times this week: We are not going to return a Christmas omnibus spending tradition, and that’s a commitment I’ve made to everyone.”
He then added, “I’ve said very clear, we’re not going to return to the omnibus tradition.”
As I have stated before, I don’t like CRs but this was big-picture thinking on the part of Johnson.
He simply could not afford to have the government shut down if the GOP wants to hold the House and take the Senate.
Now, let’s see if they start negotiating the next bill right away or they wait until the 11th hour again.
