WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, today opposed Democrats’ proposal that unnecessarily tied raising the debt ceiling to funding the government past September 30.
“All Democrats have done since they took the majority is pass massive social spending bills that are not paid for, circumvent their own committees, and neglect the very basic function of government—keeping it open. They’ve done all of this on a purely partisan basis—without a single Republican vote—and now they suddenly want Republicans to ride to their rescue and bail them out. Democrats are threatening a government shutdown as they obsess over negotiations between the left and the far left over the contents of a totally harmful and unnecessary $3.5 trillion tax-and-spend spree. If Democrats are serious about keeping the government open, then they should support the clean Republican bill that does exactly that. Instead, they are taking the basic functions of government hostage and tying them to their partisan, reckless, out-of-control spending.”