Senate Republicans are joining the call to put the breaks on spending after House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., implored Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., not to cave in to additional Democrat spending. Democrats are pleading with McConnell to support a comprehensive omnibus spending package before the current continuing resolution expires, but Senate Republicans are threatening to drag out the discussion until perhaps Christmas, according to The Hill.
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah is cautioning Republicans not to give up leverage and concede to a Democrat-desired omnibus during the lame-duck session despite the fact that Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia’s reelection on Tuesday night guarantees Democrats a 51-49 majority in the Senate come January.
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It’s crucial to keep in mind that the House of Representatives has changed party control four times since 1994 when discussing the budget bill, Lee told The Hill. “There was no post-election omnibus bill passed by Congress in any of those cases, which is what caused the shift. It shouldn’t have happened, therefore it didn’t.
There is an understandable desire on the part of the incoming members and especially on the part of those who elected them [that] you’re not going to have spending decisions by the outgoing Congress that was just voted out of office when control of the House of Representatives shifts because the voters have spoken.
Rick Scott, R-Florida, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said the Democrats’ pressure on Republicans to support additional austerity measures “has got to stop.”
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., one of the most stern fiscal conservatives in Congress, claimed that Congress has “abdicated its obligation” to utilize the “power of the purse” responsibly.
Paul told The Hill, “We abdicated by allowing all the spending to be bundled into one measure; this is likely to happen again. “We will receive a 3,000-page bill on December 16 and 18, which will be delivered to us an hour or two before [taking the floor]. Nobody will read it, nobody will know what’s in it, but there is a guarantee that it will increase the national debt by more than $1 trillion the following year.”
In order to ostensibly prevent the speedy adoption of additional Democrat spending bills before the House GOP majority takes control in January, Lee and Paul are two GOP senators who can force debate on spending.
I won’t rule that out, Lee said to The Hill. Although I typically don’t announce in advance the specific procedural tactics I might use, I won’t completely rule that one out.
Paul has a history of being a stickler for getting spending bills passed.
Someone needs to speak out and say that this is a bad way to run government, Paul told The Hill. “Some of that depends on where we are in the whole debating process,” he added. “Because of this, we are $31 trillion in debt.
Nobody has time to study 3,000-page laws that are thrown on our desk without going through the budgetary or appropriations processes, so it’s unacceptable.
In a letter to McConnell, Lee, Scott, and Paul joined Sens. Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, Mike Braun, and Mike Braun, all Republicans, to “express our strong opposition” to the spending plans that outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, want to pass “in the lame-duck.”
“The Senate ramming through a so-called ‘omnibus’ measure would entirely disable the new Republican House from adopting our shared principles,” the letter stated. “This package would fund the entirety of the Pelosi-Schumer spending agenda through most of next year.”
There is disagreement about the spending bill’s “top-line number,” according to McConnell.
According to The Hill, Sen. Patrick Leahy, I-Vt., the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Ranking Member Richard Shelby, R-Ala., are “probably $25 billion, $26 billion” apart in their negotiations.
Shelby said, “That’s a lot of money,” to The Hill. “We might be able to make progress on it. I’m hoping we can. Just now, I spoke to Leahy.”
