US House speaker Mike Johnson unveiled a Republican stopgap spending measure late Saturday aimed at averting a government shutdown in a week, but the measure quickly ran into opposition from lawmakers from both parties in Congress.
Unlike ordinary continuing resolutions that fund federal agencies for a specific period, the measure announced by Johnson would fund some parts of the government until 19 January and others until 2 February. House Republicans hope to pass the measure Tuesday.
“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 after announcing the plan to House Republicans in a conference call.
The House Republican stopgap contained no supplemental funding such as aid for Israel or Ukraine.
The House and Democratic-led Senate must agree on a spending vehicle that President Joe Biden can sign into law by Friday. Otherwise, they risk a fourth partial government shutdown in a decade that would close national parks, disrupt pay for as many as 4 million federal workers and disrupt a swath of activities from financial oversight to scientific research.
The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said in a release that the proposal was “just a recipe for more Republican chaos and more shutdowns”. She said: “House Republicans are wasting precious time with an unserious proposal that has been panned by members of both parties.“
Johnson, the top Republican in Congress, unveiled his stopgap a day after Moody’s, the last major credit rating agency to maintain a top “AAA” rating on the US government, lowered its outlook on the nation’s credit to “negative” from “stable”. Moody’s cited political polarization in Congress on spending as a danger to the nation’s fiscal health.
The Louisiana Republican appeared to be appealing to two warring House Republican factions: hardliners who wanted legislation with multiple end-dates; and centrists who had called for a “clean” stopgap measure free of spending cuts and conservative policy riders that Democrats reject.
The legislation would extend funding for military construction, veterans benefits, transportation, housing, urban development, agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and energy and water programs through 19 January. Funding for all other federal operations would expire on 2 February.
But members of both parties aimed political fire at the plan quickly.
“My opposition to the clean [continuing resolution] just announced by the speaker … cannot be overstated,” Chip Roy, a member of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, said on the social media platform X.
The Republican Roy had called for the new measure to include spending cuts.
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Democratic senator Brian Schatz called Johnson’s measure “super convoluted”, adding that “all of this nonsense costs taxpayer money”.
“We are going to pass a clean short term [resolution]. The only question is whether we do it stupidly and catastrophically or we do it like adults,” Schatz wrote on X.
A stopgap measure would give lawmakers more time to implement full-scale appropriations bills to fund the government through 30 September.
Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was ousted from the House speakership by eight hardline fellow Republicans after he moved a bipartisan measure to avert a shutdown on 1 October. McCarthy opted for the bipartisan route after hardliners blocked a Republican stopgap measure with features intended to appease them.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
