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We finally heard the right words and saw the right action from Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy over the weekend — with almost no time to spare.
Recently, as Congress and his Republican House conference in particular looked ill equipped to avoid a government shutdown at the end of September, it seemed like McCarthy might have cared more about fending off a threat to his speakership from the far-right of his party than he did about keeping the federal government running. It was as if he’d rather be the captain of a sinking ship than a crewmember on one that actually works.
That changed, thankfully and abruptly, on Saturday when McCarthy finally put a 45-day continuing resolution up for a vote to extend current funding through mid-November and provide more time to negotiate a longer-term deal. The measure passed 335-91 on a bipartisan basis in the House late Saturday afternoon, with all but one Democrat joining a majority of Republicans. It sailed through the Senate 88-9 and was quickly signed by President Joe Biden.
Some members of McCarthy’s own party, who appear more interested in chaos than governing, are already rewarding this commonsense and collaborative action by indicating that they’re going to try to remove him from his role as speaker. No good deed goes unpunished, apparently.
“If I have to risk my job for standing up for the American public, I will do that,” said on Saturday.
Hear, hear, Mr. Speaker. This is the attitude we were hoping to see much earlier in the funding talks.
“Speaker McCarthy did the right thing for the country by putting this 45-day extension on the House floor so that a strong coalition of Democrats and Republicans could sideline the self-absorbed hardliners that wanted to shut down the government,” Maine 2nd District Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat, said in a statement on Saturday. “Congress now has 45 days to negotiate a long-term agreement and I will continue working to support the budget deal that Congress agreed to earlier this summer.”
As Golden said, as 1st District Rep. Chellie Pingree said, and as even this editorial board has said, the path to avoiding a shutdown has always been a bipartisan one. That is a reality in a divided government where both parties have some control.
“For months, there has been a bipartisan path forward to keeping the government open. This stopgap passed with votes from both sides, but nearly half the Republican conference was opposed, and Democrats delivered the votes for enactment,” Pingree, also a Democrat, said in her Saturday statement. “We never should have gotten to the point of being just hours away from a government shutdown. While this stopgap is by no means perfect, it was necessary to avoid the disastrous impacts that a shutdown would have on our communities.”
Like their delegation colleagues in the House, both of Maine’s U.S. senators also supported the short-term agreement on Saturday while acknowledging that more work remains. The work must include reaching agreement on additional funding to support Ukraine against Russia’s brutal invasion.
“Today’s passage of a continuing resolution averts a shutdown and is a victory for common sense,” Republican Sen. Susan Collins said in her statement after the votes on Saturday. “Government shutdowns are harmful and should be avoided at all costs.”
Thankfully a shutdown has been avoided, at least for now. As Collins emphasized, the impacts of one would be far-reaching — from federal worker and military pay, to the critical programs and services that American people rely on, to the avoidable cost to taxpayers and the economy overall.
“Today’s vote from Congress will protect and sustain the current government services and operations that every American relies upon — from soldiers and seniors to small businesses and the most vulnerable among us — but it should not have come with so much bad faith and brinksmanship,” Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said in a Saturday statement. “The fact that this 45-day spending bill doesn’t contain the drastic and damaging cuts sought by fringe members is a welcome reality check.”
It should also be a reality check that the long-term path forward, like this short-term agreement, will rely on bipartisan work. Collins and other Senate appropriators have already demonstrated that with their collaborative committee efforts.
“Now that this immediate crisis has been averted, it is time to get back to processing the 12 appropriations bills that passed the Senate Appropriations Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support,” Collins said in her statement. We continue to agree, and we hope this weekend’s surprising agreement indicates more of a recognition from House Republicans that the path forward should come from the center rather than the fringes.
Disaster averted is not the same thing as mission accomplished. Preventing a government shutdown was certainly the responsible and necessary course of action, but Congress has a lot of work left to do to avoid being in the same situation in mid-November.
