Biden Praises Congress for Avoiding Shutdown but Blasts ‘Extreme House Republicans’ for ‘Manufactured Crisis’
AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File
President Joe Biden issued a statement after Congress passed a 45-day stopgap spending bill, barely three hours before a midnight deadline that would have resulted in a government shutdown, praising the bipartisan negotiations that kept the government running but also blasting the “extreme House Republicans” who created what he called a “manufactured crisis.”
The bill passed the Senate 88-9, a few hours after Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was forced to court Democratic votes after facing staunch opposition from hardliners in his own party, including Rep. Matt Gaetz’s(R-FL) ongoing threats to seek his ouster from the speakership.
McCarthy’s 71-page bill continued government spending at current levels for 45 days, as well as providing additional funding for the FAA and $16 billion in disaster relief funding, in response to a request from the White House.
House Democrats complained about the “rushed” timeline to read the new bill and the lack of funding for Ukraine, but in the end, enough of the members from the left side of the aisle voted to support it.
The final House vote was 335 to 91, with a total of 209 Democrats and 126 Republicans voting for the bill, and 90 Republicans against it.
The bill was then sent to the Senate, where Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) vocally objected to the lack of Ukraine funding. With about four hours left to go before the clock struck midnight, both parties were able to get agreement from their members.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) both spoke briefly on the Senate floor before the vote officially took place, expressing their support for both avoiding a shutdown and for passing a separate bill to provide Ukraine funding.
Biden voiced similar sentiments in his statement:
Tonight, bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate voted to keep the government open, preventing an unnecessary crisis that would have inflicted needless pain on millions of hardworking Americans. This bill ensures that active- duty troops will continue to get paid, travelers will be spared airport delays, millions of women and children will continue to have access to vital nutrition assistance, and so much more. This is good news for the American people.
But I want to be clear: we should never have been in this position in the first place. Just a few months ago, Speaker McCarthy and I reached a budget agreement to avoid precisely this type of manufactured crisis. For weeks, extreme House Republicans tried to walk away from that deal by demanding drastic cuts that would have been devastating for millions of Americans. They failed.
While the Speaker and the overwhelming majority of Congress have been steadfast in their support for Ukraine, there is no new funding in this agreement to continue that support. We cannot under any circumstances allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted. I fully expect the Speaker will keep his commitment to the people of Ukraine and secure passage of the support needed to help Ukraine at this critical moment.
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