In another step towards irrelevance, ten Democratic senators backed the GOP's six month continuing resolution, effectively forgoing the budget process for fiscal year 2025. The 62-38 vote to invoke cloture permitted a 54-46 vote to pass the bill.
The vote will give the President unprecedented authority to direct spending, though Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) insisted the alernative would be worse. "I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option."
Most congressional Democrats favored letting the Republicans shut the government down or agree to further negotiations across the aisle. “If you refuse to put forward an offer that includes any Democratic input and you don’t get Democratic votes, that’s on Republicans,” said Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Independent Angus King of Maine summed up the collaborators' rationale: "The problem is with a shutdown, the President and Elon Musk and the OMB have almost unfettered discretion about what happens,”
“Who's essential, who's not essential, what agencies can get to work, which ones don't. And in my view, and in the view of many of my colleagues, this is a significantly greater danger to the country than the continuing resolution with all of its faults.”
None of the 12 appropriation bills for the fiscal year have been enacted, including the multi-year Farm Bill, which had been delayed from the previous Congress. Lawmakers’ dependence on CRs to fund the government on a short-term basis undermines the budget process and introduces uncertainty to government agencies.
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