Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., introduced a bill that aims to prevent any future Federal government shutdown caused by lapsed appropriations by creating a mechanism to automatically renew government funding at the prior-year level with adjustments for inflation, the senator said.
Notably, the funding renewal mechanism would not cover the legislative branch and the Executive Office of the President, which the senator’s office said would force “Congress and the White House to come to the negotiating table without putting at risk the economy or hurting the American public.”
The bill–dubbed the “Stop STUPIDITY (Shutdowns Transferring Unnecessary Pain and Inflicting Damage in The Coming Years) Act”–“takes the aggressive but necessary step of forcing the President and Congress to do the jobs they were elected to do,” the senator said in a statement.
“It is disturbing that the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of workers are at the mercy of dysfunction in Washington,” he said. “Workers, business owners and tax payers are currently paying the price of D.C. gridlock, and my legislation will put an end to that.”
According to text of the legislation, the automatic government funding renewal and the funding amounts determined by the bill would only be in effect until the regular appropriations legislation for the relevant fiscal year was enacted.
