U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert raised eyebrows Thursday night by voting against a bill to reauthorize the National Marrow Donor Program, which matches leukemia and lymphoma patients with donors of bone marrow and cord blood.
The legislation passed the U.S. House by a vote of 415-2. Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who doesn’t shy away from controversy, were the only nay votes.
Boebert’s office did not respond to a request for comment, but the Republican from Silt told CNN that she opposed the bill because it adds to the national debt, did not go through the committee process and was not analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office, the agency which determines how much money a bill will cost.
“I’m not voting for bills that don’t go through committee and add hundreds of millions of dollars to the national debt,” Boebert tweeted Friday.
The bill — H.R. 941, the TRANSPLANT Act — was passed under a suspension of the rules, a tactic commonly used for expediting uncontroversial legislation. All other members of Congress from Colorado, Democrat and Republican, voted for it.
“It is unconscionable that Congresswoman Boebert would stand in the way of cancer patients’ access to bone marrow transplants and the cancer-fighting properties they have,” Colorado Democratic Party spokesman David Pourshoushtari said.
Boebert, a hardline conservative, has voiced frustration in recent weeks at what she sees as political inaction on immigration and a flood of migrants at America’s southern border. She tweeted Friday that the frustration has influenced her votes.
“I’m done spending away our children’s future, voting on sesame seeds and whatever else Pelosi wants while we have a humanitarian crisis at our border,” Boebert wrote on Twitter.
She was referring to a vote Wednesday requiring food companies to label when a product has sesame seeds, to which an estimated 1.5 million Americans are allergic. The House passed the requirement by a vote of 415-11. Boebert voted nay.
