The U.S. Senate approved a three-week continuing resolution on current-year federal spending yesterday, one day before the last continuing resolution was set to expire. Iowa’s Chuck Grassley and Tom Harkin both supported the measure, which passed on an 87 to 13 vote (roll call). Harkin was one of only nine senators to vote against the last temporary budget fix two weeks ago.
According to Josiah Ryan’s report for The Hill,
The new measure will keep the government funded through April 8. If the two sides do not reach a deal by then, the government would shut down. […]
The bill would reduce spending this year by $6 billion. Both the Obama administration and Senate Democrats supported many of the cuts.
The measure approved Thursday includes $2.1 billion in rescissions of funds that have not been used; $2.5 billion in earmark terminations and $1.1 billion to financial services/general government programs.
This includes $276 million for a fund to fight flu pandemics; $225 million in funding for community service employment for older Americans; and $200 million in funding for Internet and technology projects.
In other Congressional news, the House of Representatives voted yesterday to “permanently prohibit direct federal funding to [National Public Radio], ban public radio stations from using federal funds to pay their NPR dues and prevent those stations from using federal dollars to buy programming.” The 228 to 192 vote went mostly on party lines. Iowa Republicans Tom Latham (IA-04) and Steve King (IA-05) both voted yes, while all Democrats present voted no, including Bruce Braley (IA-01), Dave Loebsack (IA-02) and Leonard Boswell (IA-03). In a speech to the House floor,
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) compared to the current move to strip NPR of federal funding to previous battles to strip ACORN and Planned Parenthood of the same, both of which were sparked by sting videos by conservative activists.
“Of all of the data that we’ve seen, we still had not absorbed the culture of NPR until we saw the video of that dinner,” Rep. King said.
That “sting video” was heavily edited to take certain comments out of context.
As far as I know, Braley was the only member of the Iowa delegation to issue a statement on the NPR funding vote. I’ve posted that after the jump. Both the White House and Democrats who have a majority in the U.S. Senate oppose defunding NPR.
UPDATE: I’ve added a March 18 e-mail blast from Loebsack after the jump.
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