Ross: Patty Murray vows to restore social services as debt ceiling bill passes

This commentary will basically be a guest commentary from Senator Patty Murray. She was presiding over the Senate as they passed the debt ceiling bill Thursday night.

With one senator absent, the final vote was 63-36 in favor of passing the bill, ending the latest episode of C-Span’s least popular series, ‘Let’s Make a Crisis.’

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Senator Murray joined the majority in voting for the bill but not before making a promise that as the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, she would do everything she could to restore the social services that were cut, and she explained why.

“I am someone who grew up knowing what it meant to get by on a tight, tight budget. Six brothers and sisters, my dad was a World War II veteran, he ran a mom-and-pop store on Main Street selling everyday goods in Bothell, Washington,” Murray said. “We never had a lot. But we always got by. A lot of times, that was because our government had our backs.

“When my dad got sick, and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. My mom had to figure out how to support seven kids and find a job that would make that possible.

“A federal workforce training program helped her get a job as a bookkeeper to keep my family afloat. Me and my siblings, all seven of us, got through college thanks to federal assistance because our government invested in Pell Grants. My family and I had to rely on food stamps for a brief time, we didn’t go hungry because of federal investments in nutrition.

“So I’ll say it again, the funding decisions we make right here in this chamber are not just numbers on a page. The policy we write and sign into law has a direct consequence on people’s lives, and every member of Congress needs to recognize that.”

And she also intends to get back to a normal budgeting process. That’s where you negotiate how much you’re going to spend before you spend it, a process known as regular order, which Congress was able to do once upon a time.

“Let’s get one thing straight, hostage taking is not regular order, it is just not,” Murray said. “And it’s time we put an end to this dangerous brinksmanship at the next possible opportunity by scrapping this debt ceiling and taking the threat of default off the table once and for all. No other country handles its credit like this.”

I guess that’s why they call it American exceptionalism.

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