Bangor Daily News
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WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Jared Golden broke with his own party Tuesday, casting one of just two Democratic votes for a Republican procedural rule in a defection that blindsided Democratic leaders.
Golden of Maine’s 2nd District and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Washington, were the only two Democrats to vote for the rule, which sets up floor debate on a batch of bills, including Golden’s own Northeast Lobstermen Protection Act, which would extend a pause on new North Atlantic right whale regulations to 2035.
The rule needed their votes after five Republicans revolted, passing 210-208. By custom, the minority party votes against rules regardless of how members plan to vote on the bills that follow. Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez broke that, and Democratic leaders said they had no warning it was coming.
“That came as a surprise,” Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, D-Massachusetts, told The Hill shortly after the vote.
The five Republicans who voted no were protesting a government funding measure that GOP leaders had left out of the rule, denying them a chance to block it that way. That funding fight played out separately.
The House passed a short-term measure Tuesday, 370-48, keeping the government open into December and now heading to President Donald Trump’s desk after already clearing the Senate. It keeps federal agencies funded generally at current levels through Dec. 11, buying time on a full-year spending deal that will likely be difficult to reach.
“It gives the nation and our constituents certainty, certainty that the government will remain open, certainty that our service members will be paid,” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Oklahoma, the House Appropriations Committee chair, said.
Lawmakers were eager to avoid a repeat of last year’s record 43-day shutdown, which began over an expiring health insurance tax credit, and the 76-day Homeland Security shutdown that followed it.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the lead Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, urged Democrats to back the bill Tuesday morning, saying it had improved since an earlier, mostly party-line version passed this summer, including new limits on the administration’s grant-withholding authority.
“Whether a community receives disaster relief should not depend on who they voted for in the last election,” DeLauro said.
Golden’s lobster bill, which cleared the House Natural Resources Committee in July with Trump’s backing, later passed the House 219-196 and now heads to the Senate. The tally broke largely along party lines.
Story by Kevin Freking. BDN writer Michael Shepherd and AP writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
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