Lauren Boebert Misses Debt Ceiling Vote

The U.S. House of Representatives advanced a bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling Wednesday night, but GOP Representative Lauren Boebert, a vocal opponent of the bill, missed the vote entirely.

Wednesday's vote ended a weekslong standoff between Republican House leadership and the Joe Biden White House that brought the United States within days of economic calamity. In what, for many, will go down as the first significant win of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's term, the California Republican ultimately needed to rely on members of the other party to secure the deal, catapulting his already tepid control of the chamber into further doubt.

When the final vote was tallied, 149 of the Republican conference's 222-seat majority supported the deal, while 167 members of the 213-member Democratic conference defied the progressive wing to lend their support to McCarthy's compromise.

While Republican ranks included even moderate figures like South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace among those voting against the deal, notable opponent Boebert failed to have her say on the night. She had been urging her colleagues to vote "no" on the bill, calling the legislation a victory for Biden.

"If every Republican voted the way that they campaigned, they would vote against tomorrow's bad deal," Boebert, of Colorado, said before the vote.

Newsweek reached out to Boebert's press team by email for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.

In exchange for a two-year extension of the debt ceiling—i.e. the total amount of debt the federal government can accrue before it defaults—Republicans got a limited expansion of work requirements for social safety net programs like SNAP, reappropriations of funds intended to buffet the enforcement power of the Internal Revenue Service, clawbacks of unappropriated COVID-19 relief funds and a commitment to limit the growth of federal spending for the rest of Biden's term.

Also included in the bill was a provision to allow the construction of a controversial pipeline desired by West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin—a likely swing vote in the U.S. Senate—that put many Democrats who had traditionally supported climate change mitigation legislation in a bind.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—as well as members of the bipartisan Problem Solver's Caucus—worked early in the week to whip up Democrat support for the deal, with Democratic leadership stressing that the Biden-brokered compromise helped mitigate the worst aspects of what Republicans originally sought in the deal.

Many Republicans, however, saw Democrats' willingness to embrace the deal as a clear sign not to support it. The morning of Wednesday's vote, some began to note some of McCarthy's so-called victories would actually increase federal spending, arguing that the deal only purported to accomplish what Republicans initially sought.

One Congressional Budget Office analysis released early in the week suggested the bill's changes to federal work requirements for SNAP would actually increase spending and enrollment in the program overall, while numerous fiscally conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, Freedom Works and the Club for Growth all urged Republicans to vote against the deal.

And among the most far-right members of McCarthy's conference, the California Republican's already loose control over the chamber after a record-breaking 15 rounds of voting to become speaker earlier this year seemed to once again be teetering on a knife's edge.

In the House on Tuesday, North Carolina Republican Representative Dan Bishop claimed McCarthy was "emasculating himself and the Republican majority," later becoming the first GOP member to publicly support his removal as speaker. To win Republicans over during his speakership fight, McCarthy acquiesced to a rule change that allows a single member of the House of Representatives to bring a "motion to vacate," which forces a vote to remove the speaker. Removing McCarthy would only require a simple majority.

While some threatened to strip McCarthy's power, others like Florida Republican Representative Matt Gaetz—who was a vocal opponent of McCarthy rising to the post earlier this year—have publicly downplayed any threat to McCarthy's speakership as a result of the vote, telling the Washington Examiner in a recent statement he had no plans to support McCarthy's removal barring "some dramatic, unexpected turn of events."

"You don't remove someone simply because you disagree with them. By that standard, no speaker would last a single day," Gaetz said.