Which Republicans Voted Against the Continuing Resolution
Two long-serving Kentucky congressmen, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, joined a bipartisan effort Thursday to pass legislation preventing the federal government from shutting down Friday.
With about 10 hours to go before the shutdown was triggered, the Senate voted 65-35 to keep the government open through Dec. 3.
The necessary federal funding was set to expire at midnight, when the new fiscal year began, unless Congress passed this resolution. The House followed the Senate's lead and approved the bill in a 254-175 vote shortly before 4 p.m. Thursday.
Kentucky's other Republicans in Congress — Sen. Rand Paul and Reps. Andy Barr, James Comer, Brett Guthrie and Thomas Massie — voted against the legislation.
Rep. John Yarmuth of Louisville, the state's lone Democrat on Capitol Hill, voted for it.
Thursday's vote happened as McConnell leads the Senate GOP in a partisan standoff he engineered over the nation's debt ceiling.
More:Debt ceiling: Mitch McConnell shielded US from default before. Now he's playing hardball
The U.S. government faces a ticking clock on the debt ceiling, which is the limit on how much money it can borrow. If that limit isn't suspended or increased in time, the nation could default on its debts — an unprecedented event that probably would cause a financial crisis.
Disagreements between the parties over how to resolve the government funding and debt ceiling issues delayed the approval of legislation to avert a shutdown.
When congressional Democrats initially floated their plan to attach the debt-ceiling fix to a bill that would keep the government from closing, McConnell immediately said he and his colleagues would oppose it.
However, he said they'd support a "clean" government funding bill that also includes money for disaster relief and for assistance for Afghan refugees.
The anti-shutdown bill McConnell pushed for prevailed Thursday.
"On government funding, what Republicans laid out all along was a clean, continuing resolution without the poison pill of a debt limit increase. That's exactly what will pass today," McConnell said that morning.
He indicated Senate Republicans have been transparent about what they will and won't vote for and argued Democrats, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House, must act accordingly.
"The conclusion to draw from this week is very clear: Clumsy efforts at partisan jams do not work. What works is when the majority accepts the reality of the situation," he said. "We're able to fund the government today because the majority accepted reality. The same thing will need to happen on the debt limit next..."
The debt ceiling was reinstituted Aug. 1, after a two-year suspension, at a higher limit of roughly $28.5 trillion, which included debt incurred under former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.
The U.S. immediately hit that ceiling, and the Treasury Department expects to exhaust the "extraordinary measures" it's taking to avoid running out of money to cover the country's bills by Oct. 18.
That's the deadline Congress is up against.
Congress has passed debt-ceiling fixes before in a bipartisan way, although sometimes the negotiations were tense. McConnell himself swooped in more than once to help ensure the country didn't default on its debts.
However, this time he's refusing to help Democrats raise the debt ceiling even as he acknowledges how vital it is that Congress accomplishes that.
"America must never default," McConnell recently told The Courier Journal. "The debt ceiling needs to be raised. The issue is who should do it."
He insists Democrats can and should shoulder the responsibility of raising the debt ceiling since they want to unilaterally pass a big budget package of up to $3.5 trillion.
Democrats disagree, of course.
"Republicans are doing a dine-and-dash of historic proportions," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer recently said. "Both sides have a responsibility to pay the debt we have already incurred."
Unmoved, McConnell has led his conservative colleagues in refusing to support any legislation that lifts the debt ceiling.
In fact, on Monday Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have prevented the federal government from shutting down and lifted the debt limit simultaneously.
McConnell also objected Tuesday when Schumer requested unanimous consent in the Senate to hold a vote to lift the debt ceiling with a simple, 51-vote majority, which Democrats could have passed with no Republican votes.
"There is no chance — no chance — the Republican conference will go out of our way to help Democrats conserve their time and energy, so they can resume ramming through partisan socialism as fast as possible," the Kentucky Republican said.
McConnell has insisted Democrats should raise the debt limit through Congress' budget reconciliation process, which they could accomplish alone.
So far, though, leading Democrats have refused to go that route.
Morgan Watkins is The Courier Journal's chief political reporter. Contact her at mwatkins@courierjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter: @morganwatkins26.
Source: https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/mitch-mcconnell/2021/09/30/senator-mitch-mcconnell-votes-prevent-us-government-shutdown/5921995001/
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