CNN Newsroom: Interview with Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND)
Interview
"Well, I think the vast majority of our conference's position has always been let's pass the most conservative CR that can get 218 votes and avoid a shutdown. That's why we worked really hard a couple of weeks ago to negotiate on the most fiscally conservative spending package that's come off the floor in probably 30 years, with HR 2 border security.
Obviously, we didn't have enough votes on the Republican side to pass that. The Democrats were never going to support that. So when we lost 21 votes yesterday, we went to conference and a couple ideas were floated, one was to make the timeline shorter, that didn't have enough votes, and so, the only other option was to put this forward, otherwise, the reality is, is we were going to take whatever Chuck Schumer sent us and whether it was seven days, 14 days or 30 days that was going to end up being the CR.
So Kevin never wanted -- or Speaker McCarthy never wanted to shutdown. The vast majority of us didn't. And this was the best approach given the hand we were dealt.
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Well, I think at an alternative timeline, we passed the one we had, but obviously, we had 21 people vote no yesterday and this really becomes about, you know border security and Ukraine funding and instead I think everybody at the last minute -- because those are two issues that are important to a lot of people.
Border security is the number one issue going on in this country right now.
We had an opportunity to do that. We couldn't get it done. So now we're at where we're at, and we live to fight another day.
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Well, I think it does -- I think it did work because we were working to try -- again, trying to get the most -- I think it's an unfortunate position that the most conservative CR we can get off the floor of the House is going to require Democratic votes, but it came together today, we've got 45 days. We come back Monday, we need to continue to push forward.
We've still held DHS -- the DHS approp bill without HR 2. We have to push that issue. I think it's one of those rare issues in Congress, where Republicans can win both politically and on the policy front, and it is up to us. We've got to continue to pass our appropriations bills.
I think the entire calendar scenario on how we do. Our government funding is broken, I think we really need to reevaluate it, but this was always going to end in a CR and the question was going to be is whether we could have some control over the process or if we were going to get rolled by Chuck Schumer in the Senate.
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Well, I think we put up a large bit of number today. Somebody had to be the adult in the room. We tried every way in which to get a conservative package across the finish line, and we have a choice. We can come back Monday morning. We can start working on more appropriations bills. They're going to be tough. They're going to be messy.
We do regular order. We have open amendment process, or we can start a circus, and that's not going to be good for the conference. It is not going to be good for the country.
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No. I mean, we got to continue to do our work. But I think nobody's going to care about how we started, it is how we finished. We've got to pass our appropriations bills. We've got to deal with the border. We've got to deal with out-of-control spending in Washington, and we've got to continue to move forward.
I don't think anybody around DC had any -- I mean, everybody was convinced we were heading into a shutdown. We're going to keep ourselves out of our shutdown, and we're going to continue to do our appropriations work.
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Thanks for having me.
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