U.S. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine’s 2nd District was once again the only Democrat to vote for a Republican stopgap bill that aims to keep the government funded for another seven weeks.
The measure passed Friday in the House is now bogged down in the Senate, where Democrats withheld the required 60 votes to pass legislation and failed to advance their own government spending plan. It raises the specter of a government shutdown starting Oct. 1.
President Donald Trump has urged Republicans to not deal with Democrats on the plan. But some members of the minority party need to support it to pass the Senate. Democratic leaders are threatening a government shutdown if Republicans don’t let them have a say.
The vote in the House was narrowly divided at 217-212. Golden was the only Democrat to vote with Republicans, just as he was on the last continuing resolution vote in March. In an interview, he cast his vote as being against a government shutdown, saying his many policy differences with the opposing party didn’t justify that outcome because they won the 2024 election.
“They have the right to push forward their agenda, and the American people are going to decide if they like what they’ve done, right?” he said.
Before the vote, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, predicted that he would have full Democratic unity on the vote. He even told reporters he expected to win over Golden, a centrist who is also a perennial Republican target in a Trump-friendly district. Former Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican, is running against him in 2026.
Trump urged House Republicans to pass the bill, with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, saying there were “no poison pills” in it. He only lost two Republicans in the end before the legislation went down in the Senate.
The battle in the upper chamber was around enhanced health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire at the end of the year, plus reversing Medicaid cuts that were included in Republicans’ tax breaks and spending cuts bill enacted earlier this year, when Golden opposed alongside the rest of his party. LePage largely backed it.
Opponents of the Republican plan, including Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, have said Congress should act immediately to extend the subsidies. Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, has urged a quick fix, saying 85% of the 61,000 people served by Maine’s Affordable Care Act marketplace rely on subsidies.
Golden, who is cosponsoring a bipartisan plan that would extend the subsidies for a year, said there is time to deal with that later in the year. He said it would be “reasonable” to revisit income standards that Republicans have said are too high when discussing the future of the program.
If those conversations fail, he said there could be ways to extend the subsidies through the tax code, but it would be a disruptive way to do it if it can be avoided.
“I do think it matters that we try and get this done within the next 30 to 40 days,” Golden said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.