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Garrison Calls on Johnson to Vote for Clean CR
LISBON, Ohio -- A Democrat who hopes to unseat U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson next year and a Mahoning County commissioner supporting her candidacy urged the congressman to be “part of a solution, not the problem” in the standoff over fully funding the government, but the Republican incumbent said it is President Obama and his Democratic allies who are standing in the way.
As the government shutdown moved toward its second week, Jennifer Garrison, a former state representative seeking the Democratic nomination in next year’s race for the 6th District seat Johnson holds, and Mahoning County Commissioner Anthony Traficanti used the offices of the Columbiana County One Stop to highlight the impacts of the ongoing stalemate.
Garrison called on Johnson to support a "clean CR," -- a continuing resolution to fund the government not attached with political conditions.
The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives is deadlocked with President Obama and the Democrat-led Senate over funding for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Republicans have sought to use legislation to fund the government as a vehicle for delaying implementation of or defunding the Affordable Care Act, while the White House and Democrats have insisted that the House pass a “clean” bill, as the Senate has done.
As the standoff continues, new polling shows opposition to the shutdown, and Republicans’ approach, rising. A Washington Post/ABC poll finds that 70% of Americans disapprove of how congressional Republicans are handing the budget negotiations, up from 63% last week. Republicans also are blamed more for the shutdown than President Obama, according to a Pew Research poll.
In the meantime, the shutdown has meant the furlough of some 800,000 federal employees and closings of federal offices and agencies, including national monuments.
Locally, those impacts include the cutoff of federal funds to retrain displaced workers to allow them to go back into the workforce. Last week, Ormet Corp. in Monroe County announced it was shuttering operations, idling 700 workers in that county. “And those workers will be needing the services of the One Stop displaced worker program,” Garrison said.
Garrison pointed to the federal prison in Elkton, where hundreds of workers are required to show up for work without being paid until after the shutdown is over, and furloughs that took place at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station in Vienna Township. Over the weekend the Defense Department recalled nearly all of its 350,000 furloughed civilian workers including those stationed at YARS.
“We sent people to D.C. to do their job and part of doing their job as a congressperson is to figure out how to resolve these problems and to be a problem solver, and to work for the government to pay its bills,” Garrison said. “So I’m calling on Bill Johnson to support the continuing resolution so veterans can get the services they need and so the people of the 6th congressional district can get the services they need,” she said.
No new applications for worker retraining will be taken until the shutdown concludes, Traficanti said. The program is operating on funds carried over from the past funding cycle and cannot access $1.4 million that was authorized for the program for this year during the shutdown.
“The American people deserve a Congress that basically is going to lead, not divide,” Traficanti remarked. “They deserve a Congress that’s going to negotiate, not consternate.” Government at the local level will be the first to feel the impact of the shutdown, he said.
In the House, Garrison insisted, there is support for a continuing resolution to fund the government “at a lower level than what it’s been funded at in the past” and then use the time to resolve issues surrounding the debt ceiling, which the Obama Administration says needs to be raised by Oct. 17 to prevent a U.S. default, and the Affordable Care Act.
Johnson insists it’s the White House and Democrats who aren’t yielding to the demands of the American people.
“I would love to vote for a continuing resolution and a debt limit solution that keeps in mind what the people of eastern and southwestern Ohio have asked for,” he said, and those citizens have expressed “serious concerns” about the Affordable Care Act. The House has sent legislation four times that would have kept the federal government operating “but as of today we still have a defiant president and majority leader in the Senate,” Johnson said.
“This is about fairness. This is about making Washington live within its means and making Washington live by the same rules as hard-working American people live by every day, and that’s what I’m standing for,” he said.
Republicans didn’t want to shut down the government and has tried to be responsible in reopening parts of it, he said. The GOP-led House has passed legislation to restart programs such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, federal nutrition programs and veteran’s services but the White House and Senate have rejected those attempts.
The president has said such “piecemeal funding” of federal services is unacceptable and called on Congress to fully fund and reopen the government. During an appearance Monday at FEMA, Obama responded to comments over the weekend that he was not willing to negotiate.
“I have said from the start of the year that I’m happy to talk to Republicans about anything related to the budget,” he said. “What I’ve said is that I cannot do that under the threat that if Republicans don’t get 100% of their way, they’re going to either shut down the government or they are going to default on America’s debt so that America for the first time in history does not pay its bills. That is not something I will do. We’re not going to establish that pattern.”
In a news release issued Monday, U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-13 Ohio, said that while he is pleased that the airmen at Youngstown Air Reserve Station and the soldiers at Camp Ravenna were being called back, “it is time for Republican Speaker John Boehner to put a real government funding bill on the floor of the House so we can get the entire government running again.”
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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