This past weekend, the US Senate passed the first half of bills to fully fund the federal government in an effort to avoid another partial government shutdown.

US Senator Joni Ernst tells Raccoon Valley Radio the appropriation bills that were passed by the House and Senate, and signed into law by President Joe Biden, saw no issues coming out of the different committees.

“They were bipartisan bills and that was the beauty of it is that they came out of the committees overwhelmingly bipartisan. If you look at the Senate, I mean there was only a handful of people that disagreed and did not want to move ahead with those bills.”   

Ernst says all of the Iowa delegation, the four Republican House members and Grassley and herself in the Senate, voted in support of those bills. She points out that all of the appropriation bills have been done and out of committees for seven months, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) has yet to bring those bills to the floor for a full Senate vote.

“And we can’t explain why, other then I think he wanted to see greater levels of spending in those bills, and he thought that maybe if he held off till the end of the year and got a giant omnibus bill where you throw everything in there, he could throw in whatever the heck he wanted and nobody would notice and he’d get away with it. We’re not allowing that to happen.”   

Ernst hopes to see the other six appropriations bills get passed and signed into law within the next two weeks so the federal gov