Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Continuing Resolutions Splitting Conservatives

As Congress fails year after year to agree upon an annual budget, the government is kept limping along through temporary Continuing Resolutions (CRs). The budget is supposed to be adopted each year by October 1st, the beginning of the fiscal year. Instead, Congress has been passing multiple stopgap funding measures each year. Under Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrats have not passed an annual budget since April 29, 2009. The CR was approved by a vote of 267 to 151, with most Republicans voting in favor and most Democrats opposed. Democrats voted against it because it included deep spending cuts and freezes.
On March 6th, 2012, only sixteen Republicans voted against the latest CR. Erick Erickson of Red State refers to the bulk of them as the “Conservative Fight Club.” Most of them come from the libertarian or Tea Party wings of the Republican Party.
Yet, are they any more principled than the conservatives in the party who voted for the latest CR? Conservative stalwarts like Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Steve King (R-Iowa) all voted for it.

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