The Hill News

I rise today to speak about the current debate over the federal budget. Yesterday, we had a very tellingâ€"and troublingâ€"vote in the House of Representatives.

On the three-week continuing resolution needed to avoid a government shutdown on March 18, Speaker Boehner was forced to rely on votes from House Democrats in order to pass a measure he himself negotiated.

The reason was, conservative Republicans abandoned their party leadership in droves out of anger that the measure lacked special-interest add-ons dealing with ideological issues like abortion, net neutrality and global warming.

In all, 54 conservative Republicans rejected the measureâ€"even though it was necessary to avert a shutdown, and even though it included $6 billion in cuts to domestic discretionary spending. This is a bad omen. This was not supposed to happen.

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