House Approves Fiscal Year 2013 Continuing Resolution

The House approved the Fiscal Year 2013 Continuing Resolution to fund the federal government through March of 2013. 

“We’re going to have to pass this Continuing Resolution because we don’t want a government shutdown,” said Representative C.W. Bill Young.

But he expressed his strong concerns with the short-term funding bill: “It’s important that our national defense, the members of our military, have some certainty in what they’re going to be able to do in the next fiscal year.  But that was not to be.”

In July, the House approved the Fiscal Year 2013 Defense Appropriations Bill authored by Young, the Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, with an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 326-90. 

Under normal circumstances, the House and Senate would pass the 12 normal appropriations bills that fund virtually every federal program to be signed into law by the beginning of the fiscal year, which begins on October 1st.  Unfortunately, the Senate did not do its job as required by the Constitution, failing to approve a single appropriations bill or even pass a budget resolution in the last three years. 

“We had already voted out all but one of the appropriations bills, we had passed 7 in the House, before we got the message.  The Senate leader said:  The Senate will pass no appropriations bills this year.  There’s something wrong with that," said Young.

“When the Constitution is ignored, things don’t work right," Young said with Constitution in hand.

Read an article from The Hill on passage of the measure.