House Avoids Another Government Shutdown

After an arduous journey, the House has finally passed a continuing resolution to avert a government shutdown. The stop-gap bill was accomplished with majority Democrat help since many House Republicans opposed the vote.

The official vote was 320-99 which gives the House a week to try to pass another bill. Speaker Mike Johnson (R) worked heavily with Democrats to get the measure passed, as it needed two-thirds votes to go through.

Prior to the bill getting passed, lawmakers such as Texas Representative Sylvia Garcia (D) criticized the fact that the GOP-led House had failed to pass a government funding bill.

“We are officially 3 days from our partial government shutdown deadline. @HouseGOP continues to prioritize antics over appropriations. I'm off to Washington today to get to work. Any chance Republican leadership will follow suit, or are they too busy playing politics?” tweeted Rep. Garcia.

“Hi, everybody. This is Sylvia, your congresswoman and neighbor, and I’m headed back to Washington. We’ve been here for a week break and now we’re back,” said Garcia in the accompanying video.

The congresswoman laid out the issue as she discussed the seriousness of a government shutdown.

“Here’s the problem—we’re facing a shutdown, a partial shutdown. We’ve got to decide something by Friday. If not, we’ll have a partial shutdown. It’ll impact a lot of people. So let’s hope we all get together.”

In a full shutdown, necessary government workers and officials would not be able to work due to the lack of funding. A partial shutdown, however, could shut down HUD, rural development programs, some VA services and over 100,000 federal workers could go without pay.

“We can come to some decision. I know that the president is meeting this morning with our leadership. We’ll see what happens. Stay tuned,” said Garcia on Tuesday regarding the president’s upcoming, and seemingly successful, meeting with Johnson.

Garcia has been highly critical of the Republican Congress members, often referring to them as the “Do-Nothing Congress”.