Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Rep Tim Johnson (R) Votes Against Another Short-term Funding Measure, in Lieu of Real Budget Reform

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Timothy V. Johnson today voted in opposition to a continuing resolution to again temporarily fund the operations of the federal government. Fifty-four Republicans joined in opposition to the three-week budget, which passed 271-158.

“I cannot in good conscience continue to go along with this charade, limping along week-to-week with stop-gap spending measures because the Congress lacks the will to make the difficult decisions to restore fiscal integrity,” Rep. Johnson said. “We have been forced into these short-term measures because Democrats failed to agree among themselves on how to craft a long-term spending plan when they had the chance.

“To date in this session of Congress, we have made only halting inroads in slowing the spending train, such as shutting down the Troubled Asset Relief Program bailout, which I enthusiastically agreed to defund. But that is a drop in the ocean of a $1.5 trillion deficit.

“Nowhere in this continuing resolution is there an attempt to retrieve the $105 billion appropriated for Obamacare slush funds – basically erecting more federal bureaucracies the people don’t want. Nowhere in this continuing resolution is there serious effort to restructure funding of the wars or of our over-inflated entitlement programs.

“In February alone, according to the Treasury Department, the federal government’s revenues were $110 billion while its outlays were $333 billion. That’s no reason to celebrate a paltry $6 billion in cuts in this continuing resolution.

“We can do better. The longer we put off making hard decisions about the way we spend taxpayer dollars, the more distrust and uncertainty we breed among the people we were elected to represent. Continuing resolutions are a cop-out and I will not be part of it.”

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