The House on Thursday evening passed its $826.5 billion defense spending legislation and a separate bill with $300 million in Ukraine aid, while failing on Friday to approve its stopgap funding measure to help avoid a government shutdown.
Nearly two dozen House Republicans joined all Democrats in voting 198 to 232 against the proposed continuing resolution (CR) on Friday, as the likelihood of a shutdown increases with the end of the fiscal year just days away.
House Republican leaders last week rolled out the one-month CR deal, which exempted defense funds from a spending cut but did not include further Ukraine aid, with the proposal receiving immediate pushback from some GOP members while Democrats noted the measure had no chance of passing in the Senate (Defense Daily, Sept. 18).
“This [CR] bill has no future. At best, it is dead on arrival in the Senate, and would never be signed by the president. Everyone in this room knows that keeping the government operating and passing bills to fully fund the next fiscal year will require bipartisan cooperation, yet House Republicans are refusing to work with Democrats. This is a pointless charade with grave consequences for the American people,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee, said on the floor ahead of Friday’s vote.
Before Friday’s vote, the Biden administration released a statement noting it “strongly oppose[d]” the House’s CR proposal and said the non-defense spending cuts in the measure were a “blatant violation” of the agreements in the debt limit deal.
“Hours before a government shutdown, House Republicans are playing partisan games instead of working in a bipartisan manner to fund the government and address emergency needs,” the White House wrote in its statement of administration policy.
Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s acquisition chief, said earlier this week a potential government shutdown would be “extremely disruptive,” citing impacts to testing and acceptance of new equipment.
The Senate on Tuesday unveiled their own bipartisan CR proposal to keep the government open through Nov. 17, which included $4.5 billion for Pentagon-related Ukraine aid efforts (Defense Daily, Sept. 26).
Both the House and Senate still have to complete work on passing final FY ‘24 appropriations bill as the current fiscal year ends in 48 hours, while the lower chamber was able to narrowly pass its defense spending legislation on Thursday evening with a 218 to 210 vote.
Reps. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) and Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) were the only two GOP members to vote against the defense budget, while Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) joined all other Republicans in voting for the legislation.
Democrats had previously cited their objections to the defense spending legislation’s nearly $2 billion cut to multi-year procurement for select munitions and its inclusion of a slew of GOP-led proposals they’ve criticized as “needlessly divisive” (Defense Daily, June 22).
The House removed $300 million in Ukraine aid from the legislation and decided to consider the funding in a separate bill, which was a move from Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to shore up enough Republican support to pass the defense spending bill after a group of conservative members signaled their opposition to continued Ukraine aid (Defense Daily, Sept. 28).
The House ultimately voted 311 to 117 in favor of the separate bill with the $300 million in Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funds, which are used to award contracts to industry to meet Ukraine weapons needs.
More than half of the Republican majority, however, voted against the measure, with 101 Republicans joining all Democrats to pass the Ukraine aid bill.
A group of over two dozen conservative GOP lawmakers, led by Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), recently sent a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young detailing their opposition to the Biden administration’s supplemental spending request seeking $24 billion in continued aid for Ukraine (Defense Daily, Sept. 22).