Congresswoman Claudia Tenney (NY-24) voted against a three-month funding bill that would extend bloated government spending and maintain current levels of excessive funding.
H.R. 9747 - Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act of 2025 passed the House by a vote of 341-82.
"With over $35 trillion in national debt, it is unfortunate that we continue to write a blank check to the Biden-Harris administration, allowing them to spend at current levels," said Congresswoman Tenney. "Once again, instead of making serious cuts to excessive federal spending, Congress is merely putting a band-aid on the problem. House Republicans have passed five of the Fiscal Year 2025 spending bills, covering nearly 71% of overall discretionary spending. This includes the Defense Appropriations Bill and the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill, which provides $600 million for building the wall along the Southern Border and funding for a record 22,000 Border Patrol Agents. Yet, Senator Schumer and Senate Democrats have refused to pass any of these bills, forcing a potential government shutdown. Schumer shut the government down in 2018, but he's threatening to do it again with a refusal to include priorities that the American people want and need in this dangerous world.
"Unlike my Democratic colleagues in the House, I voted for a continuing resolution last week that would keep the government open while securing our elections and provide necessary supplemental funding to the Virginia Class Submarine program. However, unlike last week, this continuing resolution fails to include the SAVE Act, which would close loopholes requiring proof of citizenship to vote, thus enhancing election security at a critical time just weeks before the 2024 election. As Co-Chair of the Election Integrity Caucus, this legislation is paramount in ensuring that noncitizens, especially illegal aliens, cannot undermine or dilute the sacred right to vote, which is the heart and soul of our Constitutional system where we must protect self-governance against authoritarian joint control. Furthermore, this continuing resolution omits vital initiatives to strengthen border security, despite our border agents facing an unprecedented crisis, and does not provide supplemental funding for Virginia Class Submarines, threatening our supply chains and our military readiness.
"House Republicans are committed to passing spending bills through regular order, allowing for robust debate and giving the American people a voice in the appropriations process. Therefore, I could not support this resolution that continues excessive spending, which, in many ways, prioritizes Democrats' initiatives over the needs of hardworking families – while also adding to the national debt and fueling the cruelest tax on all Americans – Inflation."
ALBANY — The state’s top court threw out a lawsuit today that would have upended the way New York funds economic development projects. In a 5-to-2 ruling issued this morning, the Court of Appeals reaffirmed the state’s right to transfer funds to “public-benefit corporations,” which then take the money and offer it to private businesses in the form of grants and tax incentives. The state’s main economic-development branch is the Empire State Development Corp., which is technically independent of the government and therefore isn’t bound by a constitutional ban on giving state money to private entities, the court found. Although some “may question the wisdom of policy choices,” the court found “no constitutional infirmity to the challenged appropriations,” according to the majority opinion. A Niagara County businessman and 49 other generally conservative taxpayers originally filed the lawsuit in state Supreme Court in 2009. The group alleged that grants doled out by the Empire State Development Corp. and other public-benefit corporations violated Article VII of the New York state Constitution, which prohibits state money from being “given or loaned to or in aid of any private corporation or association.” A state Supreme Court judge had ruled to dismiss the lawsuit, but the Appellate Division reversed the ruling last year. Today’s ruling upheld the Supreme Court judge’s original decision. JCAMPBELL1@Gannett.com
