Washington, D.C. — With the government shutdown now stretching into its second week, House Republicans resorted to a novel yet hollow approach to funding the government by passing small, targeted appropriations for only a select group of government functions.
In a column released today by the Center for American Progress, Michael Linden, Managing Director for Economic Policy at CAP, outlines why the House Republicans’ latest strategy is not only impractical but also irresponsible:
So far, the House of Representatives has passed one or two of these piecemeal funding bills each day. At that rate, it would take another 32 workdays for the House to get through the rest of the funding, and that is assuming an average of $6 billion per bill. If the House chooses instead to continue to fund everything service by service, it will take more than 100 additional workdays to finish, which means the full government will finally be up and running sometime next spring.
Additionally, Linden uses the following chart to demonstrate why a piecemeal approach is a fundamentally unworkable method for reopening the government:
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