Single Democrat votes ‘no’ on House GOP’s government funding bill

Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) on Saturday joined dozens of Republicans in voting against legislation to keep the government funded, criticizing the legislation for failing to include aid for Ukraine. 

Quigley was the only Democrat to vote against the measure, which passed in a 335-91 vote.

He called out Republicans who voted against funding for Ukraine earlier this week.

“The Republican Party has become the party of appeasers, pro-Putin folks,” Quigley said. “Today our folks were forced into a decision and no one wanted to make, have Americans suffer or do what we did today, which was to abandon Ukraine.” 

“We gotta fix this in 45 days because right now, Putin is celebrating,” he added. 

Lawmakers have until midnight to pass legislation to keep the government funded or risk their first government shutdown in more than four years Sunday.  

House Republicans rolled out the new bill on Saturday morning, after an earlier and more partisan plan that included steep spending cuts and border security measures failed to garner sufficient support in the conference Friday.

The new plan, which Republicans argued was the “clean” bill Democrats wanted, would keep the government funded at current levels, while including billions of dollars for disaster relief — in line with a previous request by the Biden administration.

Republicans who voted against the plan are upset about an extension to spending levels last hashed out when Democrats held control of both chambers.

But others also saw the move as a way to put attention back on Democrats, who have called for a “clean” bill with Ukraine and disaster aid, as GOP divisions over spending have commanded much attention on Capitol Hill in recent weeks.

“Because now the shutdown would be their fault if they don’t go for it, because this was the clean CR,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said, referring to the stopgap bill, which is also known as a continuing resolution (CR). “This is what they said they wanted.”

However, many Democrats are taking passage of the bill as a victory, compared with the prior plan pushed by House Republicans a day before that called for across-the-board cuts of about 30 percent to government funding for most nondefense programs.

“Here’s what went down: we just won a clean 45 day gov extension, stripped GOP’s earlier 30% cuts to Social Security admin etc, staved off last minute anti-immigrant hijinks, and averted shutdown (for now),” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.