Blue Dog Leadership to House Republican Leadership: Look to the Middle to Get Washington Working Again

Today, the Blue Dog Coalition's co-chair for administration, Rep. Jim Costa (D-CA), and co-chair for communications, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), released the following statement on the proposed Continuing Resolution as a result of a deal brokered by a bipartisan group of Senators to open the federal government:

"We are pleased to see that cooler heads have prevailed in the Senate, and we hope this is a new starting point in both the House and the Senate for both parties to come together and negotiate in good faith with each other. However, the fact that the government was shut down—even when the White House, the Senate, and the House are under the full control of the Republican Party—is ridiculous.

"The most basic job of Congress is to fund the federal government. This is simply inexcusable, and lurching from one self-inflicted crisis to another has real consequences for government operations and families across this country. Operating on these short-term spending bills is detrimental to our military readiness and costs agencies billions of taxpayer dollars. It is time for both parties to come together to negotiate a long-term, bipartisan budget and get Washington working again.

"The reality is that we never had to reach the point of shutting down the government in the first place. House leadership has had months to bring Democrats and Republicans together to pass long-term solutions to all of the problems outlined in the debate surrounding the government shutdown. Yet they continued to pursue partisan games instead.

"Members of the Blue Dog Coalition have worked tirelessly to produce bipartisan solutions with our Republican colleagues to address all of these important issues—and we are continuing to do so. Republican leadership has the power to bring these bipartisan solutions to the floor and bring both parties together to pass these solutions with overwhelmingly bipartisan votes. Yet, Republican leadership continued to ignore our calls for commonsense solutions, and they've continued to produce legislation catered to the extreme of their party that can't pass both chambers of Congress.

"We call on Republican leadership to stop catering to the extreme, whose goal is to obstruct, and start looking to our members, whose goal is to find bipartisan solutions, so we can serve the American people and get Washington working again."

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