U.S. Senate/IL-06/IL-14: Federal Government Funded Through 9/30/20

FY2020 Appropriations Funding Bills Signed by President Trump on Friday

The good news is there will be no threat of a government shutdown entering the new year as the fiscal year (FY) 2020 appropriations/funding/spending bills were signed into law on Friday after congressional action passed all three bills.

The not-so-good news, what’s in these bills?

The picture at the top of the article shows the bundle of the Illinois FY2020 budget passed at the end of the spring session of the Illinois General Assembly earlier this year.

Think the federal counterpart would be 2 to 3 of those bundles members of Congress would need to read in order to vote on the bills.

Usually, federal appropriations for a federal fiscal year (Oct. 1 through Sep. 30) is broken out into 10-12 bills.

Because of the looming government funding deadline on Friday when the 2nd/final continuing resolution expired, the spending bills were consolidated into three separate bills:

One can read these bills at their leisure, but this Tuesday afternoon article in POLITICO gives a brief overview:

POLITICO 12/17/19: https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/17/house-passes-massive-deal-to-fund-government-and-avoid-shutdown-086514

As the 2020 campaigns for Congress and U.S. Senate kick into high gear after the first of the year, it will be really interesting for all of the Republican candidates in the 6th and 14th congressional districts, and the U.S. Senate to give us their respective takes on the funding legislation just approved by Congress and signed into law this past week.

After all, these candidates are competing for votes in order to be in Washington representing us in Congress and writing/reading/approving spending bills beginning with FY 2022 if they’re elected next November.

For current or former members of the General Assembly like Jeanne Ives, Jim Oberweis and Sue Rezin, this would be old hat for them, as they do/did this all the time in Springfield and did so for a number of years.

But what about the newcomers? Newcomers like all 5 running for U.S. Senate, Dr. Jay Kinzler in the 6th district, and Anthony Catella, Jerry Evans, Ted Gradel, Catalina Lauf and James Marter in the 14th district?

Primary voters would want to hear their respective takes on the just passed federal spending bills, and hear if they would have voted for them, or what specifically they would have done different.

Well, we’re into the two weeks when schools are out and the holiday season is fully underway.

So Republican primary voters after the first of the year, don’t let these candidates off easy. Make sure they fully understand what was just passed in Washington, since they want your vote to serve there and do the same as current members of Congress — legislate and vote on bills, including spending bills.

Serving in Congress is not just about impeachment or USMCA, it’s about all legislation for the American people, and government spending is always a key talking point for candidates, particularly Republicans.

As reference, all of the voting slides/grids from California Target Book for the 3 bills listed above are below (please note, the titles on the slides for H.R. 1158 and H.R. 1865 are the original titles of the respective legislation number. Section headers include the content of each bill as voted upon by members this past week):

H.R. 1158 – Four-bill National Security Minibus that Includes Billions of Dollars for the Military and Homeland Security.