{"id":7127,"date":"2025-03-11T01:20:18","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T01:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrats-offer-short-term-alternative-to-house-gop-spending-patch\/"},"modified":"2025-03-11T01:20:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T01:20:18","slug":"democrats-offer-short-term-alternative-to-house-gop-spending-patch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrats-offer-short-term-alternative-to-house-gop-spending-patch\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats offer short-term alternative to House GOP spending patch"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Top Democratic appropriators released a short-term funding bill Monday night meant to serve as an alternative to the House Republican plan to fund the government through September as the two parties face off ahead of a Friday midnight shutdown deadline.<\/p>\n

The Democratic bill would keep the government running on current funding levels for four weeks in an effort to buy more time for lawmakers to strike a deal on a bipartisan funding package. But GOP leaders have so far shown no interest in the bipartisan talks and are now seeking to push through a seven-month extension.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a very clear alternative to House Republicans\u2019 plan: immediately passing a short-term patch to prevent a senseless shutdown and finishing work on serious, bipartisan funding bills that invest in working Americans, keep our country safe, and ensure our constituents have a say in how federal funding is spent,\u201d said Sen. Patty Murray<\/a> (D-Wash.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro<\/a> (D-Conn.), the top two Democratic appropriators, in a statement.<\/p>\n

The new bill gives Democrats a tangible Plan B to tout as they oppose the measure Speaker Mike Johnson<\/a> plans to bring to a House vote Tuesday. While keeping the government open through Sept. 30, it would also give President Donald Trump’s administration more leeway to shift funding while cutting non-defense spending by $13 billion and increasing defense programs by $6 billion.<\/p>\n

Democrats balked at the significant changes to some programs in the Republican stopgap spending bill, including zeroing out accounts that had been allocated to member-directed earmarks in fiscal 2024. Murray and DeLauro say their shorter spending patch \u201cincludes only a handful of necessary adjustments to prevent funding issues in the interim and to extend essential health authorizations.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeLauro and Murray spent weeks trading offers with Republicans to try to secure a bipartisan government funding deal, but House GOP leaders pivoted to the long-term patch, which Democrats say will give Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk vast leeway to shift federal dollars around.<\/p>\n

If the Republican bill passes the House but stalls across the Capitol, GOP leaders are ready to blame Senate Democrats for spurring a government shutdown, which would begin at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Top Democratic appropriators released a short-term funding bill Monday night meant to serve as an alternative to the House Republican plan to fund the government through September as the two parties face off ahead of a Friday midnight shutdown deadline. The Democratic bill would keep the government running on current funding levels for four weeks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}