Just making the midnight deadline, the House of Representatives approved the spending bill, "CRomnibus," by one vote today (final count: 219-206) (Washington Post). As it was passed just before government funding expired, a government shutdown was avoided. Additionally, the House passed a two-day resolution for the Senate to examine the bill.
Supporters of the bill say that its passage was necessary, for sufficient government funding until next year. On the other hand, opponents criticize its relaxed rules on campaign finance and Wall Street regulations.
Though the bill is supported by President Obama, House Democrats unsuccessfully fought against starting the floor debate. In her floor speech, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi stated that the Democrats were "being blackmailed" by House Republicans to pass a measure and avoid a potential government shutdown. Republican leaders and the Obama administration also contacted undecided Democrats to gain their support for the bill. As a result, the official vote, where more than 30 Democrats voted for passage, differed greatly from the initial procedural vote, with no Democrat voting for it (NPR).
If there had been more time before funding was set to expire, I don't think the bill would have been passed. Some representatives "didn't like the bill, 'but [also] absolutely don't like shutting down the government," as stated by Democrat Charles B. Rangel. Overall, the passage seems like a hasty decision, one that was passed partly to just prevent the government from shutting down.
Questions:
Should the House have passed a stopgap (temporary) measure instead of the CRominbus bill?
Why did the White House give its support to the bill when most Democrats were opposed to it?
How important were the campaign finance and banking regulation rule changes in the bill's passage? Do you think the Senate will make any revisions or reject the bill?
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5 comments:
I am grateful that Congress managed to avoid having the government shut down due to lack of funding, because that seems like a rather pathetic reason for it. Not to mention last time the government got shut down there was a large pushback from the people who felt that Congress was failing to do it's job properly and thus avoided an incident similar to the previous one. What does strike me as odd though is that Pelosi and Obama were on opposite sides of this bill which leads me to believe there may have been underlying issues or considerations that factored into this bill and it's passage.
Well I don't it would be a good idea if they did to a stopgap for the bill. They a lot of control at the moment and there was already another shutdown last year so having another one really is not productive. So really it’s choosing between to poisons there. There is also why I think Obama supported the bill so that it would not really come to this. Also it shows that the democrats maybe willing to play ball more than the republicans, thus making them look better in the long run. Also he might have some kind of plan in mind so far we do not know anything. I think the financial changes in the bill were more important really since the republican ideology leans towards more business oriented things. Since the republicans are in control right now I would wager there would not be any major or drastic changes and they would pass it.
I believe that a continuing resolution was very important, though I find it a little disappointing that such important and controversial legislation was stuck in to it. The revisions to Dodd-Frank and campaign finance reform are major policy changes. Though it was smart politics on the part of Republicans to lump in the changes with the CR as the Democrats do not want to shut down the government, I don't think it is best for the American people. This are important pieces of legislation that should have their own votes. As for the chances of the bill passing the Senate, I am not sure. It will be especially interesting to see Sen. Elizabeth Warren's reaction as she was very much involved with the banking reforms after the 2008 financial crisis.
@Anish: I agree with you that it was best that a government shutdown didn't result from this. It turns out that Congress did pass a stopgap bill that is providing funding through Wednesday, which the president has already signed. (Sorry for being unclear in my original post.) Its purpose was to allow more time for the Senate to discuss this larger $1.01 trillion measure, which has just been approved and sent to President Obama. With the stopgap bill's purpose fulfilled but no revisions, it seems that more time actually wouldn't have made a difference in the spending proposal, especially with Republican control in Congress, as what you mentioned.
However, I disagree that the Democrats who voted for the bill will gain more influence in the future. It took a lot of convincing from Republicans and the Obama administration to persuade enough Democrats to switch sides. Even with logrolling, I think that the Republican majority will continue to hold a lot more power, enough to create an impasse like the one that the House nearly had regarding the spending bill.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/13/politics/senate-spending-bill/
I'm definitely looking forward to how Obama will respond to the nation's future immigration policy. I think that it needs to be addressed and what he plans to do about it. However, as Katie mentioned, there should be separate pieces of legislation instead of having it infused in this spending bill. To put it simply, it complicates how decisions would be made in Congress and could possibly threaten certain policies that may need to get passed. I think it's great they were able to avert a government shutdown but the bill needed more time to be resolved and discussed. Last year, about 800,000 federal workers were furloughed and a bill had to be passed so that it would enable them to receive back pay. Thus, it had a significant but negative impact on the economy and cost the federal government millions of dollars. In terms of Pelosi, I feel that she may have been frustrated over the lack of argument over the bill by the Democrats since the Republicans have majority in the House. This might have led to some complications in this bill especially over Obama's future immigration policy and campaign finance.
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