Repeating a popular line on the day before a government shutdown, House Democratic leadership urged House Republicans to accept a clean government spending bill, saying it was already a win for the GOP because it would maintain across-the-board sequestration budget cuts that have been in place since a deal in 2011.
“We are asking them to take yes for an answer,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told reporters Monday afternoon. “This is not a negotiation.”
It was a position offered by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and other Senate Democrats earlier in the day. They dismissed calls from Republicans to give way on Obamacare to get a spending bill passed before the federal government shuts down Tuesday, asserting that they had already compromised by agreeing to keep sequestration
“What we will send back is already a compromise,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) told reporters. “It continues cuts in every part of the budget that frankly we want to fix and replace to be able to restore critical investments, but we are willing to compromise.”
The current bill temporarily funds the government at $986.3 billion, the levels set by sequestration, as TPM has reported. The House version sets funding until Dec. 15; the Senate version sets funding until Nov. 15.
