Americans want Congress to make a deal; House leaves for Thanksgiving

The House of Representatives left Washington D.C. Wednesday afternoon for a week and a half long Thanksgiving recess after failing to move forward on 2024 funding bills. 

This may seem obvious, but a new poll drives home how Americans want more results and less rhetoric. 

According to the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National Poll, 67% of Americans want Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to compromise, compared to 27% who said Johnson should stand on principle even if it means gridlock in Congress. 

So SAN asked some of the most conservative members who have been voting against government spending bills what they think. 

“I think the only principles we should talk about is the fact that our government is $33 trillion in debt. So that’s pretty much a no brainer. It’s not a revenue problem in Washington, it’s a spending problem. And we need to do better for the American people,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., told SAN.  

“We’re fiscally going off a cliff right now, and if we don’t address that, we won’t have anything. The whole system will collapse and that, we need to address that. That needs to be our priority,” Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said.

On Wednesday the gridlock continued when members of the House Freedom Caucus blocked further consideration of the bill to fund the departments of Justice, Commerce and other agencies in 2024. 

“[This] is a response to our dissatisfaction and our unwillingness to comply and play a part in this failure theater where we act like we’re actually going to do things when we have the opportunity to do things on these spending bills, and then we don’t do them,” Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., told reporters.  

Those Republicans aren’t voting for some of the funding bills because they don’t think it reduces spending enough, but GOP leadership can’t rely on support from Democrats, because they think Republicans are trying to cut spending too much. 

“Our caucus still has questions about what that path ahead is,” Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., said. “They’re marking up bills that have dramatic cuts to programs that we care about.” 

The Marist poll also found that if the government shutdown, 49% of Americans would blame Congressional Republicans, while 43% would blame Congressional Democrats and President Biden.