Congress Avoids Government Shutdown, Sets Stage For High-Stakes Post-Election Session

 Members of Congress left Washington Thursday, having accomplished their primary task of passing a stopgap funding measure before the end of the federal fiscal year. That will keep the government open, but it sets up a high-stakes and contentious lame-duck session after the election in November.

Various subsets of lawmakers had different goals for the three weeks of session that concluded this week, but large majorities — of both Democrats and Republicans — were advocating for simply passing a clean continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government into mid-December, which, they did.

The vote in the House was 341-82, with all of the no votes coming from Republicans. Within the Oklahoma delegation, four voted yes. including Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-OK5), who said in a statement,

“I could not in good conscience vote to shut the government down, which would have damaging effects on our community, our military, and our Border Patrol agents.”

Bice blamed Senate leadership for having brought zero of the 12 appropriations bills to the floor for a vote. In the House, five of the 12, gained passage on the floor.

Congressman Kevin Hern also voted for CR, Until this month, Hern had never voted for a continuing resolution but, in a statement, said,

“Democrats and their allies in the media would love to see a shutdown so close to Election Day. They would falsely blame Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress for every problem that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris created, but I refuse to play their game.”

Congressman Josh Brecheen voted no. He wanted a CR that extended into 2025 when he believes Trump will have won the presidency and Republicans could begin a serious effort to bring the nation back from going headlong over a fiscal cliff.

“Until the fear of that in people's minds gets larger than the fear of government shutdown,” Rep. Brecheen (R-OK2) said in an interview Monday, “this is going to be the product.”

In the Senate, 78 voted yes, while 18 voted no, including Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin. In a statement, Mullin (R-OK) said,

“I’m a no on this CR, because the Senate had every opportunity to fund the government through regular order, but instead, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer willfully abandoned his responsibility and refused to bring appropriations bills to the floor.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) voted yes, he says, because they were essentially given no choice, if they wanted to avoid a shutdown.

“We have to be able to actually settle some of these issues on debt and deficit, and be able to have some of the hard conversations that are there,” Lankford said in an interview Wednesday, “but now it's going to get punted to November-December.”

One of the other things Congress will have to do during the November-December 'lame duck' session is either pass a new Farm Bill or extend the current one.