The U.S. House of Representatives is home for the summer break without having passed needed spending bills. Congressman Bill Huizenga tells us there’s a lot of work to do to get spending in place for the government before it runs out. He anticipates scrambling once the House returns.
“Really, the focus is going to be the appropriations process,” Huizenga said. “That government funding, all those government funding bills run out at the end of September.
Huizenga says he’d been hoping to get a veterans affairs bill done before leaving.
“That means it’s going to be one more bill that’s punted into September, and September’s going to be busy. That is less than ideal. The Senate, actually ironically, has done it faster than the House has.”
Huizenga says that’s never happened in his time in Congress. While some have predicted another game of chicken over a government shutdown in September, Huizenga says he doesn’t expect that. Instead, he says the debt ceiling deal reached in June sought to prevent that by instead including automatic cuts in some agencies. He’s also expecting the Farm Bill to be a big task when Congress returns.
