Free Republic

The Senate on Tuesday evening voted 70-25 to advance the $1.7 trillion Omnibus spending bill and open debate. This is just the first procedural vote. The latest spending bill is full of special interest earmarks and pork. The bill includes $45 billion to Ukraine, $7.5 million in LGBTQ programs, Jan 6 prosecution funding and more. There is no money for border security. 3,000 pages that no one has read. Senate Republicans are giving away the incoming GOP Majority House’s power of the purse until September 2023.

After months of wrangling, House Democrats managed a big win Friday, passing their roughly $1.75 trillion social and climate spending package despite a Republican effort to delay the final vote. House passes $1.7 trillion 'Build Back Better' bill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, wearing white, announced the passage of President Joe Biden's "Build Back Better Act," with the vote falling largely along party lines at 220-213.

Republicans in the Senate are struggling to come up with the five votes they'd need to ensure passage on Wednesday of a House bill raising the debt ceiling. The measure is likely to win support from the upper chamber's 53 Democrats and the two Independents that caucus with Democrats. But only one Republican, Sen. Mark Kirk (Ill.), has so far said he would back the bill. The measure needs 60 votes because Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is filibustering the bill over the lack of spending reforms attached to it. Kirk told The Hill the vote would be close. “I think...

The Treasury Department’s latest official daily accounting of the U.S. government’s receipts, expenditures and borrowings—released this afternoon at 4:00 p.m.—indicates that the legally limited debt of the federal government has now been exactly $16,699,396,000,000 for 100 straight days. The Daily Treasury Statement released today showed the status of the government’s accounts as of the close of business on Friday, Aug. 23. Because the Treasury does no business over the weekend, the federal government’s debt did not change on Saturday or Sunday. The statement for Aug. 23 said the federal debt subject to the legal limit set by Congress was $16,699,396,000,000—or...

Senate Republican staffers continue to look though the 2010 health care reform law to see what’s in it, and their latest discovery is a massive $17 trillion funding gap. “The more we learn about the bill, the more we learn it is even more unaffordable than was suspected,” said Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Republican’s budget chief in the Senate. “The bill has to be removed from the books because we don’t have the money,” he said. The hidden shortfall between new spending and new taxes was revealed just after Supreme Court justices grilled the law’s supporters about its compliance...