Marjorie Taylor Greene leads Maga fury as GOP leadership back crucial spending bill

Right-wing Georgia Republican insists she opposes continuing resolution because she does not want to fund the defence of Ukraine

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was furious on Thursday after Congress passed a bill that will prevent a partial government shutdown.

Ms Greene told The Independent that she opposed enacting a continuing resolution — necessary to avoid this weekend's deadline to have budgets in place — based on her opposition to US funding for Ukraine in its defence against Russia.

The Democratic-led Senate voted 77-18, and the Republican-led House followed suit, voting 314-108, in favour of the bill.

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"I'm voting no to this funding bill, absolutely. I'm not going to vote for the CR," she said.

She then claimed the war in Ukraine was "pretty much over."

The vote split the House GOP in half, with 107 members voting for the bill, and 106 opposing its passage.

Republicans have long opposed continuing resolutions and a handful of conservatives joined a motion to vacate former speaker Kevin McCarthy when he passed a continuing resolution in September. In response, his replacement, Speaker Mike Johnson, pledged that he would not govern through continuing resolutions.

Rather, shortly after his election, Mr Johnson shepherded the passage of a “laddered CR” where part of the government spending would lapse on 19 January and the other half on 2 February.

But Republicans in the House failed to muster enough votes to pass 12 individual spending bills. Ms Greene said that voting for continuing resolutions essentially keeps spending levels passed during the previous Congress when Democrats controlled the House majority.

“We've been passed a single appropriation bill since we've got a new speaker,” she told The Independent, noting how this was the second stopgap spending bill to pass under Mr Johnson.

Under the new spending bill, spending for one half of the government will expire on 1 March and the other half will do so on 8 March.

The House Freedom Caucus also opposed to continuing resolution.

“It’s failure for the American people to, once again, pass a significant piece of legislation that keeps in place with predominant Democrat votes, the policies that we ran against, and campaigned against,” Congressman Bob Good of Virginia, the chairman of the hard-right faction in the House of Representatives told The Independent.

But Mr Good, one of the eight Republicans who voted to remove Mr McCarthy in October, did not answer when asked whether he would entertain a motion to vacate.

“The only people out here talking about that is you guys,” he said.

Similarly, Ms Greene said that her red line to oust Mr Johnson would be additional funding for Ukraine.

“For me, it's the United States Congress, in the entire federal government would really be waging a war against Russia itself in Ukraine at this point, funding this war when it's pretty much over,” she said.

Like previous continuing resolutions, the stopgap spending bill does not include aid for Ukraine because Republicans – who largely oppose supporting the country in its war against Russian aggression – and have mandated that it be linked to measures restricting immigration.

At issue is that many conservatives oppose the top lines negotiated between President Joe Biden and House Republican leadership in bipartisan legislation to raise the debt limit.

“We’re negotiating our top lines and we need the House to negotiate theirs with us,” Senator Patty Murray, the Democratic Chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told The Independent. “Well, that's been frustrating. You know, we all need to get this done. And there's only one way to do that.”

Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee, who also voted to eject Mr McCarthy as speaker, expressed frustration but he did not say Mr Johnson had gone back on his word.

“Votes aren't there apparently – people don't think like I do and that's the situation,” he told The Independent.