House of Representatives votes to continue paying America’s bills past midterm elections

With the mem­o­ry of last autum­n’s dis­as­trous man­u­fac­tured fis­cal cri­sis and com­plete­ly unnec­es­sary fed­er­al gov­ern­ment shut­down still fresh in their minds, the lead­er­ship of the U.S. House Repub­li­can Cau­cus today allowed a bill to come to the floor to autho­rize the U.S. Depart­ment of the Trea­sury to pay the nation’s bills for anoth­er year, through the midterm elec­tions and into March 2015.

Twen­ty eight Repub­li­cans joined with one hun­dred and nine­ty-three Democ­rats to send the leg­is­la­tion to the Unit­ed States Sen­ate. The over­all vote was two hun­dred and twen­ty-one to two hun­dred and one. Two Democ­rats (John Bar­row of Geor­gia and Jim Math­e­son of Utah) sided with the remain­ing Republicans.

“Tonight’s vote is a pos­i­tive step in mov­ing away from the polit­i­cal brinkman­ship that’s a need­less drag on our econ­o­my,” said White House Press Sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney in a state­ment fol­low­ing the vote. “The Amer­i­can econ­o­my is mov­ing for­ward, but there is much more to do to ensure that more mid­dle class Amer­i­cans – and those striv­ing to get into it – can get ahead.”

“Con­gress can start by rais­ing the min­i­mum wage so that no one who works full time rais­es their fam­i­ly in pover­ty, restor­ing emer­gency unem­ploy­ment insur­ance for the 1.7 mil­lion Amer­i­cans search­ing every day for a job who need this vital life­line to sup­port their fam­i­lies, and tak­ing addi­tion­al steps to strength­en our econ­o­my and restore oppor­tu­ni­ty for all Americans.”

The roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west was as fol­lows:

Vot­ing Aye: Democ­rats Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Derek Kilmer, Jim McDer­mott, Adam Smith, Den­ny Heck (WA), Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Peter DeFazio, Earl Blu­me­nauer, Kurt Schrad­er (OR); Repub­li­cans Doc Hast­ings and Dave Reichert (WA)

Vot­ing Nay: Repub­li­cans Jaime Her­rera-Beut­ler and Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers (WA), Greg Walden (OR) Mike Simp­son and Raúl Labrador (ID), Steve Daines (MT), Don Young (AK)

With the excep­tions of Dave Reichert and Doc Hast­ings, the entire Repub­li­can side of the Pacif­ic North­west­’s con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion irre­spon­si­bly vot­ed not to autho­rize Trea­sury to pay the nation’s bills. Shame on all of them.

U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Suzan Del­Bene, who rep­re­sents NPI’s home dis­trict in Con­gress, explained her aye vote in a state­ment released to media out­lets a short time ago.

“The House’s bipar­ti­san vote today ends the risk of Amer­i­ca default­ing for the next year, help­ing us move past anoth­er man­u­fac­tured fis­cal cri­sis that could have been addressed months ago,” she said. “Fail­ure to raise the debt ceil­ing would have result­ed in seri­ous con­se­quences for our econ­o­my and the mid­dle class.”

“Today’s vote was the respon­si­ble action to take.”

We agree, and we thank her and the oth­er Democ­rats from the North­west, along with Dave and Doc, for their aye votes.

It is notable that Democ­rats sup­plied eighty-sev­en per­cent of the aye votes for this leg­is­la­tion. It just goes to show that even when Repub­li­cans are in charge, they’re inca­pable of gov­ern­ing. They dither, bick­er, and squab­ble until the eleventh hour, and then they frac­ture once it’s do-or-die time. As the New York Times explained:

Mr. Boehn­er stunned House Repub­li­cans Tues­day morn­ing when he ditched a pack­age that would have tied the debt ceil­ing increase to a repeal of cuts to mil­i­tary retire­ment pen­sions that had been approved in Decem­ber and announced he would put a “clean” debt [repay­ment] ceil­ing increase up for a vote.

Enough Repub­li­cans had balked at that pack­age when it was pre­sent­ed Mon­day night to con­vince the speak­er he had no choice but to turn to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic minor­i­ty. It was anoth­er star­tling dis­play of Repub­li­can dis­uni­ty, fueled by the polit­i­cal ambi­tions of mem­bers seek­ing high­er office and per­son­al ani­mus that burst into the open.

Angry right wing groups are call­ing for Boehn­er to be removed as speak­er. That’s unlike­ly to hap­pen, but it shows that the divi­sions with­in the Repub­li­can Par­ty are deep­en­ing. Boehn­er and Can­tor had no choice but to take a cou­ple dozen Repub­li­cans with them and part­ner with Democ­rats to vote out this bill.

They know that fur­ther hostage-tak­ing will only hurt their par­ty’s stand­ing. They sim­ply can’t afford a return to the head­lines of last October.

They were will­ing to side with the Repub­li­can Par­ty base last fall because they thought they could best the White House in a game of chick­en. But, unlike in the sum­mer of 2011, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma refused to yield to their demands.

In mid-Octo­ber, Repub­li­cans were forced to agree to end the com­plete­ly unnec­es­sary gov­ern­ment shut­down they caused and allow Trea­sury to pay the bills for a few more months with­out hav­ing extract­ed any mean­ing­ful concessions.

We had won­dered since whether they would try to once again use the threat of default as lever­age for a grab bag of good­ies. It cer­tain­ly seems that many of them want­ed to. But John Boehn­er cor­rect­ly con­clud­ed there was noth­ing to gain and every­thing to lose. He and Eric Can­tor thus allowed the Repub­li­can cau­cus to frac­ture, rely­ing on Nan­cy Pelosi and House Democ­rats to pro­vide the cru­cial votes need­ed to keep the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca from defaulting.

Democ­rats con­trol the Sen­ate, so assum­ing Repub­li­cans’ attempt to block this leg­is­la­tion from con­sid­er­a­tion can be over­come (Ted Cruz has, unsur­pris­ing­ly, promised to fil­i­buster it), it will soon be on Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s desk.