*2014 Republican Budget
As Republicans head home for the August district work period, they leave behind a disappointing record of unfinished business and partisan message bills. So far, House Republicans have not taken action on crucial legislation, including finishing a budget, stopping the sequester, completing the appropriations process, addressing the debt ceiling to give certainty to our economy, creating jobs, or passing comprehensive immigration reform.
Over the weekend, Speaker John Boehner tried to defend the House Republican leadership’s lack of legislative accomplishments. When asked on Face the Nation about the 113th Congress’ record as the least productive in history and its low approval rating, Speaker Boehner attempted to redefine how to judge success:
A scathing analysis in POLITICO this morning details many of the flaws in House Republicans’ harmful budget strategy, from the lack of progress on appropriations to the extreme cuts to domestic programs. With time running short, there seems to be little hope that Republicans will finish the budget process:
“Today marks the 100th day since the Senate passed its budget resolution, providing Speaker Boehner with the opportunity to follow regular order and appoint House Republican conferees to begin negotiations on a final version of the budget for FY2014.
MESSAGE FROM THE DEMOCRATIC WHIP
This week, the United States Senate passed comprehensive immigration reform that takes an important step towards fixing our nation’s broken immigration system. I applaud the Senate for their bipartisan legislation, which creates a reasonable pathway to citizenship for 11 million people already in our country, while also ensuring the security of our borders. It is now time for the House to take action, and I will co
“As I have said repeatedly since the House passed its budget nearly 100 days ago, Speaker Boehner has no excuse for his refusal to finish our work on a budget – a goal Republicans once shared.
“Mr. Speaker, tomorrow the Majority party is set to recess this House for a week, leaving in place the economy-stifling and irrational policy of sequester. We talked about the greatest generation. I fear that this generation's going to be the greediest generation – is not going to leave our children the great economy that was left to us but will leave an economy that is limping because of policies that we pursued and the debt that we have incurred.
After House Republicans’ deep divisions led to the failure of the Farm bill last week, Congress has less than one week remaining before the July 4th district work period to address several crucial issues. Here’s a look at legislation that the Republican leadership should bring to the House Floor for consideration, but instead continues to ignore:
MESSAGE FROM THE DEMOCRATIC WHIP
This week, House Republicans failed to pass a farm bill providing certainty to America’s farmers after they added harmful partisan amendments to the original bill that would make drastic cuts to critical nutrition programs. This Republican farm bill would have cut $20.5 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, of which half of its beneficiaries a
“I think [the market today] says a lot about uncertainty. We still have … a federal government, Congress of the United States, that is not giving certainty and confidence to the economy that we're going to be on a fiscally-sustainable, stable path, that we’re going to come to compromise, whatever the bills might be, whatever the policies might be, that we will overcome gridlock