They Fund the Government, But Republicans Just Keep Brawling
Presidential candidate Ramaswamy supported a federal shutdown
With a federal government shutdown looking nothing but inevitable, the Republican-led House approved a last-minute stopgap funding bill that keeps the lights on as lawmakers seek a longer-term solution.
And, yet, despite the modest win for a party which hadn't been able to move basic spending bills for weeks as the clock ticked towards a shutdown, rather than celebrate Republicans kept attacking each other.
After an earlier short-term funding bill went down to defeat with about two dozen Republicans helping tank the bill, the House approved a new version on the lopsided vote of 335-91.
The Senate is expected to follow suit, averting a shutdown for now.
However, Vivek Ramaswamy, an insurgent candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, opposed the new stopgap measure and instead praised those Republicans who would have closed the government.
“Want to say about the government shutdown debate broadly, I think it’s a fake and artificial debate if we’re being honest about it. What happens every time? The government comes back, all the employees get their back pay, and generally the government comes back bigger every time. Even the $1.5-plus trillion that the so-called, I would say, fiscal hawk conservatives are proposing is still the largest federal budget that we have ever had. So I think the right answer has to be thinking on the time scale of history, I actually applaud the Republicans who are holding a firm line on this.”
Other Republicans threatened to try to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for supporting the Saturday short-term bill, to which he responded with reporters.
“If somebody wants to remove, because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try,” McCarthy said. “I think that this country is too important. I will stand with our military, and with our border agents, I will stand with those two have to get their medicine from government as well. I believe that’s too important.”
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