President Biden would veto a House Republican bill pairing a six-month government funding extension with a measure requiring proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, the White House announced Monday.
In a statement of administration policy, the White House said the GOP proposal would needlessly set government spending “at insufficiently low levels” for six months, rather than providing a short-term stopgap to give Congress more time to pass new spending bills.
Continuing resolutions, or CRs, the congressional parlance for stopgaps extending current funding and policies into the next fiscal year, should always be as short as possible, the White House said.
A six-month stopgap is “especially irresponsible” in holding defense funding and policies stagnant because it “would erode our military advantage relative to the People’s Republic of China, degrade readiness, and fail to provide the support our troops deserve,” the administration said.
The March 28 end date of the stopgap also comes “dangerously close to the deadline when across-the-board cuts would come into place next year, as dictated by the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023,” the statement said.
The White House slammed House Republicans’ inclusion of “unrelated cynical legislation that would do nothing to safeguard our elections, but would make it much harder for all eligible Americans to register to vote and increase the risk that eligible voters are purged from voter rolls.”
The proof of citizenship requirement is “unnecessary” because it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, the administration said, adding that “states already have effective safeguards in place to verify voters’ eligibility and maintain the accuracy of voter rolls,” as the bill seeks to mandate at the federal level.
The White House supports the $10 billion included in the bill to refill the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund, which is depleted, but took issue with the exclusion of other disaster recovery funds for programs run outside of FEMA.
“The bill omits critical disaster relief funding that communities in over 20 States and Territories need to address housing, economic development, and other long-term recovery needs,” the administration said. “The bill also fails to provide necessary funding for highways and bridges that have been damaged by disasters in 38 States and three Territories.”
The White House also opposed the exclusion of funding needed to plug a budget shortfall at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which it said may have to slow hiring and reduce health care services without a funding infusion.
The GOP proposal also excludes funding that the administration requested for the Social Security Administration to process a backlog of income support requests, for nutritional assistance and programs that help small businesses access capital and technical assistance, the statement said.
“House Republicans have chosen brinksmanship,” the White House said, urging them to reverse course and engage in a bipartisan process to keep the government open.
The administration’s position follows similar views expressed by House and Senate Democrats.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries sent a letter to his caucus Monday saying the Republican funding proposal “is unserious and unacceptable.”
The New York Democrat called for a short-term stopgap that will permit Congress “to complete the appropriations process during this calendar year and is free of partisan policy changes inspired by Trump’s Project 2025.”
Republican leaders are tentatively planning a vote on the funding stopgap this week, but it’s not clear whether they’ll have enough votes to pass it. Some members of the conference argue it is a messaging bill designed to fail, and at least a handful of Republicans typically vote against any stopgap funding measure.
“I don’t care which bright shiny object is attached to it, or which fake fight we start and won’t finish,” Rep. Thomas Massie, Kentucky Republican, said in a post on X announcing his plan to vote against the measure. “Congress is spending our country into oblivion, and this bill doesn’t cut spending.”
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.
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