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Purple-haired Dem falsely claims House GOP tried to sneak a ‘pay raise’ in stop-gap bill SHE voted for

October 1, 2023 | | Print Article

A House Democrat falsely accused her Republican colleagues of trying to hide a “pay raise” in their last-minute stopgap spending bill.

During remarks made on the House floor this Saturday, Rep. Rosa DeLauro complained about the “many changes” between the stopgap being pursued by House Republicans and the stopgap being pursued by Senate Democrats.

“Here is one that I believe the majority will not mention: They amend the Senate bill to give themselves a pay raise. A pay raise. It’s there. You can look at me, you can smile but what you did was you amended the Senate bill to give yourselves a pay raise,” she said, according to Fox News.

She later repeated her claim on social media:

Over on the House floor meanwhile, her GOP colleagues reportedly shouted her down, saying, “That’s false.”

“Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., later took issue with DeLauro’s statement, claiming it was ‘simply not true’ and an ‘excuse’ not to vote in favor of the measure,” Fox News notes.

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To disprove her claim, he reportedly read aloud the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened,” the amendment reads.

“You need to know who’s telling you the truth and who’s not telling you the truth,” Scott said. “Recently, you heard my colleague from Connecticut tell you that the Republican bill has a pay raise for members in Congress. It’s simply not true, and if it did, it would be unconstitutional. And if the Senate bill changes the compensation for members of Congress, then it, too, is unconstitutional.”

“They are simply grasping at straws. They have intended to shut down the government from the start. Disregard totally what you’re hearing from the other side. They are grasping at straws, making excuses and telling flat-out lies about member compensation as an excuse to vote against this piece of legislation,” he added.

Listen:

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The House later voted on the stopgap, and guess who voted in the affirmative … DeLauro!

“House lawmakers on both sides of the aisle broke into applause in a rare moment of bipartisanship after the short-term bill known as a continuing resolution (CR), passed 335 to 91. Every Democrat but one voted for the bill, and 90 Republican members voted against it,” according to Fox News.

Subsequently, the bill quickly made it through the Senate, after which President Joe Biden signed it into law.

“Tonight, bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate voted to keep the government open, preventing an unnecessary crisis that would have inflicted needless pain on millions of hardworking Americans,” the president said in a statement.

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“This is good news for the American people. But I want to be clear: we should never have been in this position in the first place,” he added, unable to resist taking an unnecessary and partisan swipe at Republicans.

FYI, this mess came to be because of the president refusing to negotiate, not the other way around.

“So far, the White House has refused to negotiate, stressing that an agreement was already in place and House Republicans are refusing to honor its terms,” even the Associated Press, a left-wing out, admitted.

This is why a majority of Americans rightly blame him for the now-averted shutdown crisis:

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As for the stopgap bill that finally made it through, it’ll reportedly fund the government for 45 additional days and includes $16 billion disaster relief that the president had requested over the summer.

Its passage — better late than never — comes after House Republicans previously tried but failed to pass a much more extensive stopgap bill that included border security provisions and spending cuts.

Twenty-one dissenting Republicans tanked the prior stopgap because they wanted much deeper spending. Yet thanks to them, the House was ultimately forced to accept a deal with no border security, no real spending cuts — and, if anything, more spending.

Vivek Saxena
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