Staff Reports
President Joe Biden said in a statement released late Saturday that he was angry that he had to sign a temporary bill to keep the government open. He said, "We should never have been in this position in the first place." Biden stressed that Congress is in charge of authorizing government spending through yearly appropriations bills. With these bills not passed, the government will no longer be able to spend money after September 30, which is the end of its fiscal year. If these bills had not been passed, the government would have had to stop doing non-essential tasks on October 1.
The president praised the majority of lawmakers from both parties for moving to keep the government open. This kept hardworking Americans from having to go through extra trouble. A continuing resolution (CR), which is another name for the short measure, was backed by more Democrats than Republicans. It keeps the government funded at the same level until November 17, while talks about the 2024 budget continue.
It was very important for President Biden to avoid these kinds of disasters. He said, "We should never have been in this position in the first place." He talked about the budget deal he made with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy before and criticized "extreme House Republicans" for trying to back out of the deal by calling for big cuts that would hurt a lot of Americans.
Also, the 21 GOP holdouts who insisted on finishing the appropriations process before passing a CR joined Democrats on Friday to stop another Republican's chosen CR. These Republicans are very careful with money, and they think that passing a CR would make it take longer to make a full-year spending plan. The CR that Biden signed on Saturday doesn't cut spending or add to border security.
President Biden also said that the CR did not include any new money for Ukraine. He said that the US's support for Ukraine could not be stopped and asked Speaker McCarthy to make sure that the help Ukraine needs gets passed. Different laws will deal with funding for Ukraine individually.
