The White House is looking for legislative options to prevent another scenario of the 35-day shutdown, and their propositions for the solution has drawn the attention and support of top leaders of Congress.
Bills were introduced by members of both parties, suggesting that the government should be automatically funded in case lawmakers fail to meet the statutory budget guideline.
According to The Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was allegedly interested in the idea, and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer favored the idea during a news conference in Manhattan.
“Now that the shutdown is over, we should roll up our sleeves and make sure it never happens again,” Schumer said, according to Newsday.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he not only supported the legislative proposals out there, he said he would “go further.”
“You want to know how you’ll never have a shutdown again? Let’s not pay the members of Congress and Senate,” McCarthy said.
Funding for agencies affected by the partial government shutdown will lapse again on Feb. 16 unless a new spending agreement is reached. Both Portman and Warner are pushing to include a provision to end future shutdowns in any final funding deal.
“If there’s any good that can come from this shutdown, let’s make sure this is the last time a president is able to shut down the government as a negotiating tactic,” Warner said on the Senate floor Friday. “The final deal should include language that eliminates the practice of shutting down the government.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders neither endorsed nor rejected the proposals during a Monday press briefing.
“I’m not going to get into the hypotheticals of taking that off the table,” she told reporters. “I haven’t seen a piece of legislation for us to even consider at this point that would make that a reality.”
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