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Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Thursday that Democrats would vote for a short-term patch to keep the government open while Congress hashes out a longer-term funding deal.
“We need a short-term continuing resolution, maybe four weeks, in order to finish the budgeting process and get that done,” Warren told Semafor’s Burgess Everett in an interview. The current government funding is due to expire on March 14, meaning Congress has eight days to avoid a shutdown.
House Republican leaders have aimed to hold a vote on a “full year” continuing resolution, which would maintain current levels of funding for the military and non-defense agencies through Sept. 30 — Senate Democrats are not yet bought into the proposal, however.
Speaking at Semafor’s Tackling Washington’s Tax and Spend Priorities event in Washington, DC, Warren said that Democrats are not prepared to “write a blank check for Donald Trump to just have a big slush fund to do whatever he wants to do,” stressing that “a short-term CR, we can put our shoulder behind that and make that happen.”
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Warren also laid down an early marker on the country’s debt ceiling, which Congress will have to tackle in the coming months. She argued that it should be scrapped, as Republicans seek to lift the cap by $4 trillion so the US can continue to pay its bills.
“I’m tired of this thing being used as a political lever,” Warren told Semafor. “So maybe Trump and I can make that happen.”
Warren, a former teacher, also gave a strong defense of the Department of Education, which President Donald Trump has said should be shuttered. “I don’t think he has the legal authority to do this,” Warren noted.
“What is he telling us about his vision of America?” Warren said. “It’s a vision of America that says we’ve got to stop these crazy investments in our children, like getting them educated… And what we want to do with that money is that we want to spend that money instead on tax cuts for billionaires.”