Congressman Dave Brat’s comments on the vote for the Continuing Resolution:
Last night, the House passed a short-term spending bill that will fund the federal government through Dec. 11th. The continuing resolution passed with 151 Republicans voting against it. That means, even though the GOP holds a majority in the House, the Democrats – along with a minority of Republicans – passed the budget. I’d call that a disaster.
So….Here we go again!
You don’t have to be clairvoyant to figure out what happens next. Right now, none of the key committees are in charge of the budget, there’s a few people in a back room somewhere tinkering with the numbers — there will be a lot of adding, and no subtracting — and they will come up with a “budget”. A couple of days before the stopgap funding runs out in December, Congress will be given an omnibus bill that blows the budget caps, increases the debt ceiling, funds a long-term transportation bill without paying for it, and throws everyone’s pet projects in there for good measure.
It sounds boring, but Congress needs leadership that will get us back to regular order. We are representatives of the people, and the way we are governing now — ignoring the good work done in standing committees — takes the people out of process. We need a budget that represents our priorities: that flows from the people to their representatives to the budget. It’s that simple.
Congress could take back their power of the purse strings and defund many unnecessary, and largely unwanted, government programs like Planned Parenthood. But apparently that’s too much to ask. Is it too much to ask that all of our Republican representative in Congress at least try to defund something, sometime?