Democrats And Tea Party Members Team Up To Shut Down Stopgap Bill
It took an odd partnership but the Democrats and various members of the Tea Party worked together on Wednesday to vote down the GOP stopgap bill.
The surprise defeat came at a vote of 230-195. Democrats were opposed to the bill because it contained $1.5 billion in cuts to the governmental loan program which provides discounts to car manufacturers who build fuel-efficient vehicles. On the GOP side many members believed that the underlying bill allowed high rate spending which they were hoping to cut.
With the bill shot down by two parties House Speaker John Boehner and his GOP team of lawmakers have went back to the drawing board. The GOP hopes to come up with a suitable alternative before the government shuts down at the end of next week.
If a measure isn’t signed into law soon there’s also a chance that FEMA could run out of money early next week, thereby stopping their efforts to support Hurricane Irene recovery efforts and other disasters. Part of the bill that was rejected would have provided $3.7 billion to relief efforts.
The hope was that the stopgap bill would pass in order to give the government enough cash to survive through November 18 when they would examine 12 unfinished spending bills.
Do you think it was a good idea to shut down a temporary order that would have kept the government moving along? Also what do you think about Tea Party Republicans teaming up with Democrats to stop a bill? It must have been a fairly awful option for that partnership to take place.
