Eastern district Rep. Matt Rosendale voted against funding measures aimed to keep the federal government open this week while western district Rep. Ryan Zinke said forcing a shutdown would do more harm than good.
Rosendale, coming to the end of a four-year stint representing Montana in the House, had signaled for days that he wouldn’t support a continuing resolution brought by fellow Republicans to keep the government fully funded through March.
Meanwhile, Zinke, also a Republican, was ready to extend funding through the first two months of President-elect Donald Trump’s second term, which starts in late January.
After several failed attempts, the House voted 366 to 34 to keep the government funded late Friday afternoon, with one lawmaker voting present. Rosendale was among no votes and Zinke among the yesses. As of 5 p.m. Friday, that measure had yet to pass the Senate.
“Shutting down up the government just gives the opportunity to the executive branch to pick and choose where, the citizens, the public, can be harmed for political purposes,” Zinke said in an interview Friday. “It doesn’t save any money. It actually costs more money, because when you shut down the government, eventually the government has to be restarted. It’ll cost you more money. It’s like you’re asking for a sword, but then they give you the hara-kiri sword.”
Rosendale said he has never voted for a continuing resolution and wasn’t going to start on what could be his last day at the Capitol. Rosendale said the measure would extend the terms of the last budget approved by Congress, in this case, the 2022 budget approved by a Democratic-controlled House and Senate and signed by President Joe Biden.
“When you govern from emergency to emergency with continued resolutions instead of utilizing the appropriations process that is in statute,” Rosendale said, “you literally continue Joe Biden’s policies at Nancy Pelosi’s spending levels.”
Rosendale has consistently held out for an annual budget based on the “regular order” budget process specified by the 1974 Budget Act. That process, which involves passing 12 appropriations bills through the congressional committee process by the end of each fiscal year, has been finished by Congress only four times since the Budget Act took effect in 1977.
Rosendale and seven other Republicans voted with minority Democrats in October 2023 to oust then-House-speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican who Rosendale’s cohort faulted for failing to pass a budget using the regular order process. Rosendale said he was initially hopeful current Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, would deliver a budget, but that hasn’t happened.
Zinke, who as a member of the House Appropriations Committee has a direct role in producing a budget, said House Republicans have been making progress toward negotiating a complete federal budget. Lawmakers brought five of the 12 bills that comprise the budget through committee in 2023. This year they brought eight bills through the process.
An initial bipartisan proposal to keep the government funded stalled this week after surprise opposition from tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has been tapped by Trump to lead a government efficiency effort. Musk doesn’t currently hold office but used his social media platform X to campaign against the first continuing resolution the House attempted to pass.
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