Senator James Lankford said the government is once again on the verge of a shutdown as funding is set to expire tonight. “We’re right up against a government funding deadline,” he explained, noting that the House has already passed a clean continuing resolution to keep the government open for seven more weeks while negotiations continue.
Lankford argued that Senate Democrats are blocking that approach. “They don’t want to vote for just keeping the government open,” he said. “They want a trillion dollars in new spending, including bringing back COVID bonus payments free health care for illegal immigrants and new climate programs.”
According to Lankford, Republicans have pushed for a simpler plan. “Republicans have just said, Hey, let’s just keep it open. Let’s keep it going. Let’s not shut the government down, and let’s just keep negotiating all the different issues for the next several weeks.”
He stressed that such stopgap measures are common. “This is the same thing. It’s happened 13 times in the last few years for Republicans and Democrats,” Lankford said. “When we got to this point, we just kept it open so we can keep negotiations.”
Lankford warned that a shutdown would have widespread consequences. “It really does hurt the American people, both on the world stage, hurts federal employees, and it’s really, really frustrating to people all across the country and across Oklahoma,” he said.
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