Lauren Boebert, part of the faction of GOPers who opposed Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s debt ceiling deal with President Biden, did not make it to the House floor to vote on the final package.
What Happenend to Lauren Boebert?
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) joined several others on the House Republicans’ right flank in opposing the debt ceiling compromise reached between President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
“It’s more Washington gimmicks from the swamp that kicks the proverbial can down the road,” Boebert said at a press conference Tuesday, as reported by Colorado news outlet CPR News. “In short, tomorrow’s bill is a bunch of fake news and fake talking points that will do nothing to rein in out-of-control federal spending.”
However, when it came time to actually vote on the bill, Boebert did not vote against it- in fact, she did not show up to vote at all.
“Rep. Lauren Boebert narrowly missed the vote, running up the steps right as they gaveled,” Axios reporter Juliegrace Burke tweeted Wednesday.
One local reporter tweeted that Boebert had tweeted against the debt ceiling deal more than 20 times, but was not able to vote against it.
“How can you represent #CO03 when you don’t even show up?,” Adam Frisch, the Democrat who narrowly lost to Boebert in 2022 and is running against her again in 2024, tweeted after the missed vote. “What was more important than voting?”
When Republicans took the majority in the House in January, McCarthy announced an end to proxy voting, which had allowed members of the House to cast their votes remotely, especially during the pandemic. McCarthy had even sued then-Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, when she instituted voting by proxy early on in the pandemic.
In the end, Boebert’s absence for the vote didn’t end up mattering much, since the measure passed by a vote of 314–117 in the House.
But as pointed out by Insider at the time, the lack of proxy voting has a chance to come back to bite the Republican majority, especially with their small margins.
“At a time when a Speaker would ideally like to have the chance to guarantee the votes and backing of absent members, he’s given away one of the best tools a Speaker had to nail down votes of the ill, the absent, the traveling, the unreliable, and those distracted by other ambitions. It could end up costing him,” Insider said back in January.
Boebert has been in the news for various odd reasons in recent weeks. The Congresswoman, who recently announced that she is divorcing her husband, denied that she is romantically involved with Sean Feucht, a Christian country singer, joking that Feucht has “better hair than me.”
Last month, Boebert introduced legislation to repeal the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the bipartisan gun control law that passed Congress in 2022, after the Uvalde mass shooting in Texas.
“I unapologetically support the Second Amendment. No amount of gun control will ever eliminate evil in our society, and unsurprisingly, the data has shown time and again that gun control does not decrease gun violence,” Boebert said in a statement about that legislative push. She had also sought to name the AR-15 America’s “national gun.”
The Congresswoman was mocked for saying that she once sought birth control, but realized that “it’s cheaper to have a kid,” in comments that got her denounced by fellow Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“And then she voted against the right to contraception so she could double this problem and give it to the next person,” AOC tweeted about the comments, in reference to Boebert’s opposition to the AOC-sponsored Right to Contraception Act.
Frisch, meanwhile, has reportedly outraised Boebert in the first quarter of the year, by a margin of $1 million, as the race in their district promises to shape up as one of the most closely fought in the country next year.
Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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