Posted on 02/08/2018 1:39:03 PM PST by Red Badger
Sen. Rand Paul was blocking the Senate's move to quickly pass its massive budget deal Thursday with only hours until government funding lapses.
For the Senate to hold a vote on the spending package Thursday, all senators must agree. The Kentucky Republican held out as he sought a vote on an amendment to maintain budget caps.
"All Senator Rand Paul is asking for is a 15-minute vote on his amendment to restore the budget caps. He is ready to proceed at any time," Paul spokesman Sergio Gor said in a statement.
As Paul railed against lifting spending caps, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would cost about $320 billion. Most of that would come in the first year.
Paul, a fiscal conservative, opposes the boost to military and domestic spending proposed by bipartisan Senate leaders. The bill before the Senate would set up a roughly $300 billion increase in the budget caps over two years.
When the Senate gets to a vote, the measure appears to have enough support to pass.
"I think it will all work out. But it's up in the air," said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, according to Politico.
If the Senate approves the proposal, the House would then have to pass it before midnight Thursday and send it to President Donald Trump for his signature.
In the House, both fiscal conservatives and liberals who sought a deal to protect young immigrants from deportation threatened the plan's passage. On Thursday morning, House Speaker Paul Ryan said he believed his chamber had enough support to approve it.
GOP Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Steve Daines of Montana said they would oppose the plan over spending concerns.
Flake said in a statement that "fiscal responsibility is more than a talking point to trot out when the other guys are in charge."
In his statement announcing opposition, Corker said, "to say I am discouraged by the outcome of these negotiations would be an understatement."
The vast majority of the Republican lawmakers who are opposing the budget agreement, including Paul, voted for the GOP tax law. The massive tax cuts are estimated to add more than $1 trillion to budget deficits over 10 years, even after economic growth is taken into account, according to the CBO.
— CNBC's Ylan Mui contributed to this report.
I think he was referring to the parasites, not you personally..................
If baseline budgeting is still going on, budget caps are a joke. And Paul knows it.
It’s better to have no budget at all......................
They should be required to do the jobs that Americans don't want to do (and wetbacks are being removed from)
It’d be cheaper.
I dont think they really cared then even. Deficits only matter to the base, and a very few in congress. The bulk of them couldn’t care less. Just this morning Rush was saying he didn’t care about deficits anymore because in his words, nothing bad has happened even though we have all this debt and continued deficient spending...
I think it was the most despicable thing I’ve heard Rush say and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear him walk it back tomorrow.
The problem is, if we are really going to allocate $719 billion per year to the Pentagon, there needs to be cutbacks in other parts of the budget to balance things out. Otherwise, the slack has to be picked up with yet more debt. But Congress is not willing to make those kinds of tough choices.
I can see why it wouldn’t much matter to Rush (who I greatly respect). Neither he nor I will have any hand in repaying the debt or suffering the consequences when the piper demands his due. As for my seven small grandchildren it is a different matter altogether.
That’s way too cerebral. You got to bring that down to the current intellectual maturity level. The Republicans are scratchy and the Democrats are itchy.
Bump to that!
Yeah but that won’t stop the big gubmint wing of FR from calling Paul a Losertarian kook or whatever.
He, and his crazier father, have never been military friendly, that I can recall.
The Republicans are Lisa and the Democrats are Bart Simpson......................
The Dems and the Repubs are both salivating over the huge tax revenues that are going to come in from the revived economy.
They don’t want the other to get their hands on it first....................
The Republican party only talks about fiscal sanity when they’re in the minority and don’t have to actually DO anything.
Rand Paul is right.
I also just heard that it eliminates reconciliation and that it has Obamacare “fixes” in it. This is an abomination.
They used to call these bills “Christmas Trees”—but nowadays that is not politically correct. :-)
No, he's not. We could use 99 more just like him.
When Senator Paul is for or against something, you can be assured it is a position supported by the Constitution, a document I often wonder if he's the only elected official in D.C. who has ever bothered reading.
“Rand Paul is right.”
No question about it.
It’s good to hear other ex-military guys recognize it - I was airborne too.
People who think the Pauls are anti-military are not correctly making a distinction between guys like them who certainly do respect the military and phony right wingers who just like the type of foreign entanglements and chest thumping which Jefferson warned us about.
Spending the next generations’ money IS the definition of corruption.
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