If you thought the threat of a government shutdown was taken off the table, think again. Virginia may once again get caught in the crosshairs of a partisan battle in Washington.
Before Speaker Boehner retired he worked with President Obama to reach a two year budget agreement. That agreement is the blueprint, but it didn’t come with any dollar bills attached to it. Now that lawmakers have less than a month to actually fund the government, conservatives are trying to use the bill to undo the president’s initiatives, like the EPA’s new Clean Power Plan.
“It’s always a good time to go after the EPA on carbon.”
That’s Virginia Republican Congressman Morgan Griffith. His southwestern district is in coal country and many lawmakers from the region want use the process to undermine the EPA.
“I mean look their rules are just so ridiculous and they’re doing so much harm for little gain. You know we can argue about how much but even they would admit on some of their regulations there’s not a lot of gain and so you know do we really want to impoverish thousands of people in my district alone and I don’t think we do.”
President Obama is threatening to veto any spending bill that includes so-called policy riders. Griffith says the House won’t be scared by the threat.
“We have an obligation to do what we think is right for the American people and then if the president wishes to use his veto pen that is his prerogative under the Constitution and then we’ll have to see if we have enough votes to override and we may not but you know we shouldn’t prejudge that before we actually put it on his desk.”
There’s also an effort in the G-O-P to repeal so-called Obamacare, while some House Republicans want to use the government funding bill to defund Planned Parenthood. Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner says conservatives are playing with fire.
“If you want to debate social issues and other issues fair but don’t threaten the shutdown of the government on issues non-related to the budget.”
Warner is hoping that conservatives will give up on their battles over the controversial issues and take the threat of a government shutdown off the table.
“Well I think yeah I think there is a moment that that small group of extremists were going to try to extract a pound of flesh and I think, I hope, reasonable people in both parties say no. So we cannot go through the economic damage that would take place of another potential government shutdown.”
The House took a week off for Veteran’s Day, while the Senate was only in Washington for a day and a half. That’s not good enough for Virginia Republican Congressman Rob Wittman. He says there’d be fewer time constraints if lawmakers didn’t take so much time off. But Wittman thinks there’s still time to debate policy as a part of the spending bill.
“I think you start immediately. You get those things done as Speaker Ryan said time should be played as our ally so we need to get immediately underway to have the debate on the appropriations bills or combination of bills or bill whatever it maybe. Get that done. Get it over to the Senate and to the President as quickly as possibly if there is a discussion point then you give yourself the ability to use time as your ally not as your enemy.”
For Wittman, it’s important that he and other House members get to offer amendments as a part of the spending debate, instead of just rubber stamping what party leaders agreed to.
“No I think anything that we can do to open up the process that all House members can openly debate their thoughts and ideas about things is what we need to do. I think that’s what the process is meant to be. If you’ve got a good idea and you can garner enough votes to get that into a piece of legislation I think that’s what needs to happen. I think that’s where some of the frustration is built up in the house I think that’s where frustration builds up outside of here to for folks to say you know you need to have an open and fair process.”
Lawmakers have until December eleventh to fund the government.