With just a day left in Congress, retiring Representative Ken Buck has delivered a parting gift—that looks more like a parting shot—to his fellow Republicans.
Buck signed House Democrats’ foreign aid discharge petition Thursday night, the first Republican to do so. If the petition, which was launched earlier this month, reaches 218 signatures, it would force a vote on a $95 billion foreign aid package. The package, which has already passed the Senate, includes $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, an increasingly unpopular issue among far-right Republicans.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to consider the aid package, which would also give aid to Israel and Taiwan, despite it passing the Senate with broad bipartisan support, because it does not include regulations for the U.S.-Mexico border that he considers strict enough. But if the aid bill makes it to the House floor, it is expected to pass, again with bipartisan backing.
As of Thursday night, the discharge petition had 188 signatures. It needs just 30 more to pass.
Buck also signed a competing discharge petition to force a vote on a package that includes both Ukraine aid and new border restrictions. Other Republicans have also signed on to that petition, which has only 16 signatures so far.
Although Friday is Buck’s last day in Congress, his signatures will remain on both petitions until his temporary successor is chosen in a special election. If the successor also signs either petition, Buck’s name will be removed. The special election to replace Buck won’t be held until June, coinciding with the Colorado primaries.
Despite sitting on the far-right wing of his party, Buck has found himself at odds with his fellow Republicans in recent years. In fact, the far-right House Freedom Caucus voted Tuesday night to oust Buck from its ranks. One member, speaking anonymously, told The Hill that Buck hadn’t attended caucus meetings regularly for months.
The member cited Buck breaking with Republicans on “several major issues” and “leaving the conference hanging with a historically narrow margin” as the main reasons for his removal.
When Buck first announced his retirement in November, he slammed the GOP for pushing “self-serving lies,” including that the 2020 election had been stolen. More recently, he has been seemingly the only Republican who refused to fall in line with his party’s efforts to impeach Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Buck has repeatedly pointed out that neither impeachment effort is based on any evidence of wrongdoing.
Last week, when Buck announced he would retire early, he told CNN that the past year had been the “worst year of the nine years and three months that I’ve been in Congress.”
“Instead of having decorum, instead of operating in a professional manner, this place has just devolved into this bickering and nonsense and not really doing the job for the American people,” he said.