David Weldon: “I rise to speak out about an important initiative that I will be supporting next week and have been supporting up until…”

“I rise to speak out about an important initiative that I will be supporting next week and have been supporting up until now, which is an effort to avoid another Government shutdown. There is a disaster appropriations bill that should be coming to the floor next week, and I support an initiative to attach a feature to that appropriations bill that would be a safety measure to avoid another Government shutdown. The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Gekas] has been the primary mover behind this, and I rise to speak out strongly in support of this initiative. I believe that the Government shutdowns that we had last year were generally agreed by people on both sides of the aisle as well as the President and the Vice President to have been counterproductive and to have been something that we should have avoided. And we have an excellent opportunity right now to attach an amendment to this appropriations bill that simply stated what it would do is, it would in the event that we cannot reach agreement with the White House on an appropriations bill, that the Government would stay open at a given funding level, whether it is 100 percent or 98 percent of the previous year's funding level, so that we do not get into this scenario where the Government is shut down.”