It’s not clear how Connecticut’s congressional delegation will vote on the last-minute spending agreement hashed out on Friday night, an hour or so before the federal government would have shuttered if the budget stalemate hadn’t been broken.
But only Rep. John Larson, D-1st District, voted “no” at 12:40 Saturday morning, when the House took up a stop-gap spending bill to keep the government open for a few more days until Friday’s deal could be translated into legislative language, debated, and voted on.
Reps. Joseph Courtney, D-2nd District, Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District, and others supported that emergency funding bill. A spokesman for Larson said the congressman could not be reached for comment on Saturday.
In a statement on the frenzied final negotiations, Larson expressed frustration with the Republican efforts to push for such deep spending cuts to the fiscal year 2011 budget, as well as their efforts to insert divisive policy provisions, such as funding for women’s health services, into the fiscal debate.
“Last night, Republicans took the nation to the brink, not over deficits, but over a social agenda; impeding economic recovery and boasting that this is just the start of what they want to do. Their next target: Medicare, Social Security, and working families,” Larson said in his statement.
The details of Friday’s agreement are still murky. The major elements have been made public-most notably, the nearly $38 billion in cuts to fiscal year 2011 spending and the exclusion of divisive policy provisions, such as a Republican push to defund Planned Parenthood.
But how that $38 billion in spending cuts will be spread across various programs has yet to be spelled out. And whether lawmakers like Larson go along with the plan–negotiated by President Barack Obama, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, and House Republican Speaker John Boehner-is far from certain.