Centrist Maine Democrat says he’ll support GOP’s short-term funding bill

A centrist House Democrat said Tuesday that he will back the Republicans’ short-term government funding bill if it hits the floor Wednesday, as scheduled, becoming the first Democrat to announce support for the controversial spending package.

Rep. Jared Golden, a moderate Maine Democrat, noted that he’s already voted in favor of one of the most controversial pieces of the Republican legislation: a proposal, known as the SAVE Act, designed to ensure that noncitizens don’t vote in American elections. With that in mind, he suggested his vote for the larger package to prevent a government shutdown is a no-brainer. 

“I’m going to vote to keep the government open,” Golden said. “I mean, I voted for the SAVE Act in July. So I kind of feel like people know how I’m going to vote on the issue.”

He added: “Why would I vote to shut down government for something that I’ve already voted for and agree with?”

Golden’s support is a rare bit of good news for GOP leaders as they scramble to shore up enough votes to pass their continuing resolution, or CR, on Wednesday. The package is being attacked by some Republican deficit hawks who oppose the levels of spending it promotes, while a separate group of GOP defense hawks are balking at the idea that the Pentagon would not see an increase in funding for a full six months.

The internal opposition has raised the prospects that the bill will fail on the House floor, undermining the Republicans’ negotiating leverage as they begin talks with Democrats on a compromise bill that can pass through the Democratic-controlled Senate and win President Biden’s signature. A failure to act by Oct. 1 would result in a partial government shutdown. 

The debate is creating enormous headaches for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who is fighting not only to prevent such a shutdown next month, but also to grow the House GOP majority at the polls in November and keep his gavel next year. With the House almost evenly split, he has little room for defections. 

Golden, who’s facing a tough reelection contest, was among five House Democrats who supported the SAVE Act in July. At least two others on that list — Texas Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez — have suggested this week they would oppose the broader Republican spending bill.

The other two, Reps. Don Davis (D-N.C.) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), have declined to weigh in.

On Tuesday, the Speaker vowed that he’ll bring the package to the floor Wednesday regardless of whether it has the votes to pass. 

“You all know how I operate: You do the right thing and you let the chips fall where they may,” he told reporters in the Capitol. “So we’ll see what happens.”

House Democratic leaders, meanwhile, are whipping the members of their caucus to oppose the Republicans’ CR. They want a “clean” funding extension, without the SAVE Act, and they want a shorter spending window — into December instead of March — to allow Congress another chance to pass a full-year, 2025 funding package in the lame-duck session.

Golden, a former Marine who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, said he has reservations about the potential effect of the GOP’s six-month extension on federal agencies — not least the Pentagon. And he acknowledged that the Republican CR proposal, even if it does pass the House on Wednesday, is going nowhere in the Democrat-controlled Senate — a scenario that will force congressional leaders to shift to a Plan B that can win more bipartisan support and become law.

Still, he said those concerns weren’t enough to prevent him from voting to keep the government open. 

“Operating on CRs is tough on the military, tough on the VA, tough on all federal agencies that give services for the American people. But that doesn’t mean that I would shut down the government for that,” he said. 

“Whenever possible, I would rather not be on the record voting for a shutdown.”