Watson Coleman on potential government shutdown: ‘Why put people through that?’

As New Jersey’s lone member of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) has a front-seat view of this year’s dramatic, potentially shutdown-causing appropriations process. She’s not pleased with how it’s turning out.

“[The Appropriations Committee] had been, up to this point, a rather collegial committee,” Watson Coleman said. “It’s not anymore, unfortunately. It gets kind of tiresome, fighting these issues, listening to Republicans justify cutting money to Social Security, climate, the environment, health care – all those things that you think are so vitally important.”

Congress has until September 30 to pass the appropriations bills required to keep the government running – or, in the basically certain event that that isn’t possible, pass a stopgap measure to stave off a shutdown. That will require substantial negotiation between Republicans in the House and Democrats in the Senate and the White House, but Watson Coleman isn’t too optimistic about Republicans bargaining in good faith.

“If there is a government shutdown, it’s because Republicans wanted there to be a government shutdown,” she said. “If you ask me the logic behind that, I can’t answer that, because it doesn’t make sense to me. It’s hurtful to the economy, it’s hurtful to the people, it’s hurtful to the services, it’s hurtful to the programs.”

In Congress, the appropriations process is divvied up into 12 separate bills, each of which is handled by a designated Appropriations subcommittee that focuses on a particular government agency or agencies. Watson Coleman, who is in her fifth year on the committee, serves on two of those subcommittees: the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, & Related Agencies Subcommittee and the Transportation, Housing & Urban Development, & Related Agencies Subcommittee.

The individual appropriations bills originate in those subcommittees before heading to the overarching committee; after being approved there, they get sent to the House floor. Once the House and Senate both pass matching bills, that officially funds the government and allows programs that had previously been enacted to begin spending money.

This year, though, the process is proving quite difficult. According to Watson Coleman, that’s in large part because the House Republican caucus is intent on passing bills that Democrats find unacceptable; the bills include a number of conservative amendments on abortion and other social issues, and also push funding levels below what had previously been agreed to.

“They bring up the elimination of all diversity and inclusion and things of that nature, just to signal a kind of negativity,” Watson Coleman said of the Republican amendments, many of which have focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. “That’s very disruptive, and that’s created a fission within our committee that we hadn’t really experienced before.”

That’s exactly what happened with the lone appropriations bill the House has passed so far, the bill funding the Veterans Affairs Department and military construction. Though that bill is usually the easiest of the 12 to pass, nearly every House Democrat voted against it when it came up in July – including all nine New Jersey Democrats – because of socially conservative amendments that had been stapled onto it.

As for the other 11 bills, nine have passed the Appropriations Committee on largely party-line votes, with most or all Democrats voting in opposition, and are awaiting a full House vote. Two others – including the Labor, HHS, and Education bill that Watson Coleman helps oversee – have yet to even pass through the full committee.

(Over in the Senate, all 12 bills have come out of committee on bipartisan or even unanimous votes, though no floor votes have been held yet.)

Given that state of affairs, congressional leaders are planning to instead pass a continuing resolution, which will fund the government on a temporary basis and give them more time to work out a longer-term funding deal. But with some hardline conservative House Republicans set to oppose that stopgap measure, preventing a shutdown may not be possible, much to Watson Coleman’s dismay.

“It’s a pretty rough-and-tumble time, unfortunately,” she said. “Why put people through [a shutdown]? People can lose their homes, they can lose their pay, they’ll lose their ability to take care of their families and put food on the table. That’s not necessary.”