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Rep. Ellmers: 'No Problem' Spending Christmas in Budget Talks
Newsmax
Friday, December 12, 2014

If completing a bill that keeps federal agencies afloat means giving up Christmas at home, that's fine, said Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina on Newsmax TV Thursday, because it's a better outcome than another government shutdown.

"I have no problem staying here," Rep. Ellmers told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner as Thursday's deadline for completing a budget approached with the House still wrangling over a $1.1 billion catchall bill to fund the government through next September.

"This is what I bought into and this is what my family bought into when I decided to run for Congress," said Ellmers, who has a Veterans Administration hospital and 70,000 former armed services members residing in her district.

"I'm standing with the American people and getting some work done," she said. "If that's what it takes, that's what I'll do."

Ellmers, who came to Congress in 2010 with fellow tea party activists demanding cuts in government spending, disagreed with some of her conservative colleagues on the wisdom or value of holding up the federal budget and risking a repeat of last year's government shutdown.

"It is certainly an option, but it's not a productive option," she said. "We were elected to govern, not to come here and shut down the federal government. We have to move on."

The question, she said, is how do Republicans — who will control both chambers of Congress starting in January — strategically position themselves now to do "the right thing" later when they have the greatest leverage over spending.

She said the "Cromnibus" spending bill — short-term "continuing resolutions" attached to a one-year "omnibus" spending package — does the job by covering the government's overall tab while de-funding President Barack Obama's executive order to shield immigrants here illegally from being deported.

Starting in January, "we can actually go in there and make some really good policy [and] legislative moves, and we have many options available to us," said Ellmers.

She also argued that the bipartisan deal taking shape now is not the rush job or the giant giveaway it's described as by cromnibus haters.

"Everything that is in this bill has been negotiated over the last year because essentially what it is," she said, adding, "It has many very good things in it that all of the American people can embrace. It cut[s] funding to the EPA and it cut[s] funding to Obamacare."

Ellmers predicted that Congress will ultimately pass this bill and avoid another shutdown.

"There are those out there that believe that we had the good election results [in November] because we ended up in a government shutdown [in October 2013]," said Ellmers. "That is absolutely not true. It is because of all the work we've done since then."

"We've got to do everything we can [going] into the new Congress with our Republican majority," she said. "That means we have to position ourselves correctly because we know the president continues to play chess, and we cannot continue to play checkers."