LAST-DITCH moves to prevent a US government shutdown took a dramatic step forward Saturday, as Democrats overwhelmingly backed an eleventh-hour Republican measure to keep federal funding going for 45 days, albeit with a freeze on aid to Ukraine.
The stopgap proposal adopted by the House of Representatives with a vote of 335-91 was pitched by Speaker Kevin McCarthy just hours before a midnight shutdown deadline that would have seen millions of federal employees and military personnel sent home or required to work without pay.
The deal, which was opposed by 90 House Republicans, still has to be approved by the Democrat-controlled Senate.
CNN quoted an administration official as saying the White House would likely support the bill in order to keep the government open with the expectation of being able to restore Ukraine aid later.
The shutdown crisis was largely triggered by a small group of hardline Republicans who had defied their own party leadership to scupper various temporary funding proposals as they pressed for deep spending cuts.
Saturday’s bill kept federal spending at current levels and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called the vote “a complete and total surrender by right-wing extremists.”
But the result could end up costing McCarthy his job. The 21 hardliners had threatened to remove him as speaker if a stopgap measure they opposed was passed with Democrat support.
One of the hardliners, Lauren Boebert, declined to say afterwards whether the group would try to force McCarthy out, but she was clearly unhappy with the vote.
“There are too many members here who are comfortable doing things the way they’ve been done since the mid ’90s,” she told reporters. “And that’s why we’re sitting at $33 trillion in debt.”
