If the House fails to enact funding legislation by the end of the month, as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has threatened to do, then the government will shut down.
On Friday morning, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sent out a “Dear Colleague” letter praising Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and ranking Republican Susan Collins (R-Maine), with whom he frequently disagrees.
Schumer said that the country could not afford to see more of the same hostage-taking tactics used by Republicans in the House earlier this year. These tactics were used to please the most extreme members of the Republican Party.
He brags that the House moved all 12 appropriations measures out of committee with unanimous support from both parties. The implication was that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who had previously agreed to curb spending with President Joe Biden, had gone back on his word and was now supporting political legislation that had little chance of passing.
I have asked House Republican leadership to follow the Senate’s lead and enact bipartisan appropriations legislation,” the majority leader added, emphasising that “the only way to avoid a shutdown is via bipartisanship.”
Schumer’s letter follows Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s speech in Kentucky the day before, in which McConnell emphasised the need for bipartisanship to keep the government open, but his remarks were swiftly overshadowed by the Republican’s health scare.
McConnell said, “The speaker and the president reached an agreement, which I supported, to set spending levels for next year in connection with raising the debt ceiling.” The House subsequently enacted budgets with lower spending levels. That won’t happen again in the Senate.
