Only one Wisconsin Republican voted to end a historic partial government shutdown and avoid default. Eighth District Congressman Reid Ribble is the only Republican member of the state’s congressional delegation who supported the eleventh-hour deal.
“I supported it because I was focused on the real issue. I can’t speak towards my colleagues who chose not to vote for it, I’m sure they had principled reasons that they didn’t,” Ribble told WHBY. “My emotion was to vote no, but my intellect said to vote yes, that this was the next logical step forward to proper fiscal management.”
“The debt limit itself is merely a symptom of the larger problem. If someone had brain cancer, you wouldn’t want a doctor to give them and aspirin because of the headache. That’s treating a symptom. We need to deal with the cancer, and that’s spending and revenues not being aligned. The way you do that is by properly managing the nation’s finance through a budget and appropriations process.”
Republican Senator Ron Johnson and GOP House members Tom Petri, Sean Duffy, Jim Sensenbrenner and Paul Ryan all voted to reject the deal. “Raising the debt ceiling does not solve the fundamental problem that our federal government spends more money than it takes in. That is why I conditioned my vote to raise the debt ceiling on the inclusion of reforms to address our spending, specifically our ballooning entitlement spending, including the latest entitlement – Obamacare. That’s the responsible, common sense thing to do. Since the bill being voted on tonight does none of these things, I cannot support it,” Duffy said in a statement. “I came to Washington to change the way things are done in this town. I still believe it is immoral for our government to continue living for today while saddling our children with the debt and inevitable tax increases to pay for it.”
Ryan, Johnson and Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin will all serve on a conference committee named to come up with federal spending and deficit-reduction measures by December 15th. Ryan is the chairman of the House Budget Committee and will serve as one of the co-chairs of the new panel. Johnson said he ran for office to do what he could to prevent the bankrupting of America, and appreciates being named to the committee. Baldwin said she look forward to working across party lines on the budget conference committee to find common ground on a bipartisan budget agreement.