Here's how Virginia's senators voted on bill to avoid government shutdown

Yahoo

15-03-2025

The Senate voted 54 to 46 Friday to pass the Republican-backed continuing resolution to fund the government through the end of September, narrowly avoiding a government shutdown.
The measure divided Senate Democrats — those who opposed the funding measure said the resolution would lend too much authority to President Donald Trump and DOGE to continue making sweeping federal cuts.
Both of Virginia's Democratic senators voted against the continuing resolution and explained their rational ahead of the vote.
'We don't need to turn anymore power or money without any controls over to Elon Musk and Donald Trump,' said Sen. Mark Warner in a statement on social media on Friday ahead of the vote. 'It's time to stand up for the folks in Virginia who say enough of this craziness.'
Sen. Tim Kaine said Thursday he favored an alternative 30-day stop gap bill in the Senate and opposed the House version, which will keep funding at near-current levels until Sept. 30.
'One of the parts of the CR that I don't like is that it also just gives a lot of discretion to the administration to keep doing what they're doing, keep the chainsaw massacre going with Donald Trump and Elon Musk without Congress, without respecting the congressional appropriations process,' he said. 'It's one thing to have a president grabbing power unlawfully, we can challenge that. But if we vote to give the president the power to do whatever the president wants to do, then we can't challenge it anymore.'
After the vote, the senators issued a joint statement expressing frustration that amendments 'to rein in and defund DOGE and protect our veterans from being indiscriminately fired' were rejected by Republicans. They also previewed their next challenge: tackling Trump administration tariffs.
'… We are already gearing up for our next fight: forcing a Senate vote on our legislation to challenge Trump's senseless trade war with Canada, which will only raise costs for Virginians,' the statement said.
A long-term lapse in appropriations could have caused major damage to the region's economy, according to Bob McNab, chair of the economics department at Old Dominion University. Federal entities employ residents by the tens of thousands in Hampton Roads. While many of the region's federal workers with military jobs or other essential workers would have continued to go to work during a shutdown, they would not have been paid. Other workers would have been furloughed.
'A government shutdown is a hurricane for Virginia, and it's two points of landfall are Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads,' McNab said.
Speaking ahead of the vote, McNab said $1 billion per month could be removed from the Hampton Roads economy if there is a long-term shutdown. The federal government employs about 60,000 workers in Hampton Roads, and those employees earn about $6 billion in wages each year. The military's 85,000 active duty members in the area earn another $4 to 5 billion, McNab said.
With a pause in contracts, as well, he said the effects compound.
'Those military service members and those federal civilian employees — when they're not paid — don't spend money like they used to,' he said. 'They're not going out to restaurants and bars. They're not going to the home improvement store. They curtail groceries, they buy less gasoline. So all of a sudden, you add a significant economic shock to the Hampton Roads economy.'