WASHINGTON -- With a government shutdown looming, Rep. John Carney voted Thursday against a stopgap measure that would finance government operations for another week.

The bill passed 247-181 along party lines, but it is not expected to pass the Senate and President Barack Obama said he would veto it.

The White House called the GOP measure a "distraction" from ongoing negotiations to avert a shutdown and fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year .

It is the seventh stopgap spending measure Congress has passed since fiscal 2011 began on Oct. 1 last year.
"Frankly, it's time to get this thing done," Carney, D-Del., said in an interview.

Thursday's measure would cut $12 billion from current spending and fund the Defense Department for the remainder of the year. It also would prevent federal funds from being used to provide abortions in the District of Columbia.

Democrats wanted to pass a "clean" measure -- free of unrelated partisan provisions and with current spending levels intact -- to fund the government for another week. But Republicans rejected that idea.

"We don't accept the status quo," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia said. "America is broke. That is why we're trying to address our fiscal crisis and to get the debt under control."

Carney was one of 85 Democrats who joined Republicans on March 15 to support a stopgap measure with about $6 billion in cuts, a measure that many Democrats considered unacceptable.

"I'm willing to make more cuts, frankly, than some of the Democrats in our caucus, that's the simple fact," he said.

But he viewed Thursday's proposal as a Republican political maneuver designed to make Democrats appear at fault if the government shuts down. He called the bill's abortion-related language "frustrating" and "discouraging."

"This should be about fiscal decisions, cutting spending, getting the balance right, getting the priorities right -- not about advancing a kind of a right-wing conservative social agenda," he said.

Congress has until midnight Friday to agree on a budget for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Otherwise, an estimated 800,000 federal workers could be furloughed nationwide and a variety of government responsibilities would be suspended or delayed.