Eight conservative Republican senators are throwing up a potential roadblock as Congress races toward a March 11 deadline to pass a new omnibus spending bill or face the prospect of a government shutdown.
“This steadily rising debt has been fueled by decades of reckless spending and a total lack of accountability to the U.S. taxpayer in Congress. Now, as America drowns in debt, we are facing yet another crisis driven by reckless government spending—record-breaking inflation.”
The signers are Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Cynthia M. Lummis (R-Wyo.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).
“Appropriating funds is the most basic duty of Congress, but during many of the past several years, Congress has cut corners by passing massive ‘omnibus’ spending bills with little time to review or digest the spending and policy, let alone determine how such spending will impact our nation’s financial and economic well-being. This must end,” the letter-writers told Schumer.
But in the meantime, because Congress kicked the can down the road in February by passing a continuing resolution that kept current spending levels through March 11, the new deadline presents a potentially serious problem for Biden and Schumer.
Negotiators from both parties have been working for several weeks trying to iron out a consensus on a measure that can gain approval by the deadline. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters on March 3 that the negotiations are complex but moving forward.
“The negotiations are literally in about 1,000 pieces. No one piece will make or break it. We’ve been working hundreds of hours in the evening, late last night, last weekend, and we'll put the pieces [together],” Leahy said.
By their very nature, omnibus bills are always massive, reaching to several thousand pages of legislative language that’s often difficult to understand for those not directly involved in writing particular passages.
As a result, it’s all but unheard of for every senator and every member of the House of Representatives to read a proposed omnibus spending bill in its entirety before deciding whether to vote for or against it. The eight GOP senators aren’t happy about that state of affairs.
“Last time the Senate considered an omnibus spending package, in December 2020, senators were handed a massive $1.4 TRILLION bill, that was nearly 5,600 pages long, and given just hours to look through the bill before it was brought up for a final vote. That is insane, and shows just how broken Washington is,” the letter-signers told Biden.
“We know that reckless government spending only makes inflation worse, and while our country is experiencing historical price hikes, we cannot allow another massive spending package to be rushed through Congress without proper consideration and scrutiny.”
The remedy demanded by the senators is two-fold: First, they want “appropriate time for senators to review any appropriations or omnibus package. Giving each of us the opportunity to read the bill is a reasonable and common-sense request that must be accommodated.”
Second, the signers demand that there be “a comprehensive review of this bill, once finalized, to be conducted by the Congressional Budget Office [CBO] so that it may provide Congress and the American public an estimate of the bill’s current and future impact on inflation, the federal debt, and any potential impact on the long-term solvency of the Medicare and Social Security trust funds.”
The signers didn’t tell Biden how long they think each senator should have to read the entirety of a spending bill before deciding how to vote on it. It also isn’t known how long CBO might need before it can produce the inflation impact analysis sought by the Republicans.
A spokesman for Schumer didn’t respond by press time to an Epoch Times request for comment.
Paul’s measure would have also required senators to sign an affidavit attesting to having read or heard read the entire proposal. No other senators are listed as having co-sponsored the Paul proposal, and it never advanced out of the Senate Rules Committee to which it was referred.
