The House of Representatives passed a coronavirus package in the dead of night Friday by a vote of 219 to 212 with no Republican support and two Democrats voting against it.
Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-OR) and Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) crossed party lines and voted to reject the bill known as the American Rescue Plan, which only allocates nine percent of the bill’s funding towards fighting the coronavirus:
Saturday 1:41am: House NOW voting on $1.9T COVID-19 relief bill. pic.twitter.com/Q9LTgbFbK3
— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) February 27, 2021
Golden said in a statement:
Unfortunately, the path congressional leaders have chosen goes far beyond these key provisions, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. After supporting $4 trillion in emergency COVID relief in 2020, I won’t support trillions more in funding that is poorly targeted or in many cases not necessary at this moment in time.
Schrader has been in Congress since 2009. In December 2020, he was one of just two Democrats who voted against increasing stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000.
“We’re in a different point in the crisis,” Schrader said in December, adding:
When we were first dealing with COVID, we had no idea what it was. It was scary. Businesses were shut down. Folks were told to stay at home. We had no idea what we were facing. The goal with the checks and the rest of the program was to [sic] just to show America that [C]ongress had their back.
Schrader has not issued a statement explaining his Friday vote. Both Golden and Schrader are members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.
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