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Rep. Tom Cole: House passed seven-week funding extension as shutdown continues
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Summary
Rep. Tom Cole, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said the House passed legislation to extend federal funding for seven weeks and blamed Democrats and the Senate's 60-vote rule for a partial government shutdown.
Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said the House has passed legislation to extend federal funding for seven weeks while lawmakers continue negotiations and faulted House Democrats and Senate procedures for the ongoing partial government shutdown.
Cole said the short extension was intended to allow “the normal appropriations process” to proceed and argued the shutdown is already costing services and pay for essential workers. "Quite frankly, the House has done its job. In other words, we've actually passed legislation to give us an additional 7 weeks to continue to work on the normal appropriations process," Cole said.
Why it matters: federal agencies operate on annual appropriations; a lapse can delay pay for uniformed and civilian federal workers and interrupt programs that serve low-income families. Cole cited military personnel, air traffic controllers and border and law-enforcement workers as examples of employees who are working while not being paid during a shutdown.
Cole said the House measure has bipartisan support in the Senate but that it has not reached the 60 votes needed under Senate cloture rules to overcome a filibuster. "55 senators have voted for that," he said, adding that the 60-vote threshold is a Senate rule rather than a constitutional requirement. Cole described the failure to secure 60 votes as the principal impediment to reopening the government.
A clip of House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries played during the interview disputed Cole’s characterization of talks, saying Republican leadership had gone "radio silent" since a White House meeting and accusing them of failing to negotiate. "Since that point in time, Republicans, including Donald Trump, have gone radio silent," Jeffries said in the clip.
Cole responded to the Jeffries clip by saying the House already had acted and that the current action is in the Senate, calling the Democratic leader "irrelevant" to the near-term process because the House had passed the extension. He also reiterated concerns about service interruptions, saying the shutdown could affect programs including the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). "We may even get to the point where we're not extending, literally help to, women and children on the so called WIC program that... helps particularly single parents or low income parents, put food on the table," he said.
Cole invoked earlier shutdowns in 2013 and 2018 and said those experiences show shutdowns are politically damaging and ineffective. He also said the House was prepared to resume a normal appropriations process once the government reopens but that the Senate's current functioning was preventing that step.
The interview did not include a House vote tally for the seven-week measure, and Cole did not identify specific senators who oppose it. He said he was aware of ongoing communications in the Senate between Republican and Democratic senators but emphasized that, in his view, the next formal action to reopen the government must come from the Senate.
No implementation timeline or specific Senate votes were provided in the interview. Cole said three appropriations bills were "almost ready to pass" but that they could not advance while the government was shut down.
