For eight years, Republicans blasted President Obama and the Democrats for runaway spending. For eight years, Republicans said “vote for us” to end the madness.
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They lied.
Last night, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate passed exactly the kind of massive spending bill they used to rail against–a gargantuan $1.3 trillion Omnibus that has more devilishly reckless details than anyone could possibly count.
One Republican tried.
Sen. Rand Paul got through 600 pages of this 2,232 page monstrosity, sharing many of the details, before learning enough to know he would vote against it.
Imagine that: a U.S. Senator had the radical idea he should actually know what he’s about to vote on.
Here’s what Sen. Paul found and shared via Twitter:
You can read the rest by continuing on Twitter, but Paul’s following tweets are included here.
Page 348 of terrible, rotten, no-good budget busting bill, a nugget that I wish we obeyed
sec. 8103: none of the funds may be used in contravention of the War Powers Act
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 22, 2018
hmm . . . that would mean we shouldn’t be spending $ in undeclared wars in Yemen, Libya, Niger, Somalia, Afghanistan
wonder why the party that talks about the rule of law, doesn’t obey the rule of law?
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 22, 2018
and I’m STILL reading. This bill is no @bradthor thriller.
Page 365:
Overseas contingency operations. aka military slush fund that circumvents budget caps.
All told, we’ve spent over a trillion dollars in this budget busting category.
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 22, 2018
Page 376 of terrible, rotten, no-good budget busting bill:
I found it! I found it! Border security, what President Trump wanted!
no . . .wait a minute section says Defense can spend what funds it determines to enhance the border security of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Tunisia
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 22, 2018
eyes getting tired but really someone should read this beast.
Page 392 sec 9007: no $ shall be spent “for the permanent stationing of US forces in Afghanistan”
Wonder what they meant by permanent? Some might argue that after 16 years we approaching the definition of permanent.
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 22, 2018
Page 430 of “crumni-bus:” Good news. The government is going to “earn” $350 million by selling oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Bad news is the $ won’t go to reduce the $21 trillion debt. The $ will be instead be spent elsewhere by the Federal government.
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 22, 2018
Page 447: a little over $30 billion for Dept of Energy
Wonder if anyone would notice if we had no Dept of Energy
Put oversight of nuclear waste in DOD and let supply & demand be our Energy policy
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 22, 2018
Page 485: No $ used by the IRS to target citizens for exercising 1st amendment rights.
Do you think Lois Lerner knew about this part of the law before she targeted Tea Party groups? pic.twitter.com/t41kZ63oD8
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 22, 2018
Ordered some pizza to help me get through. Still going… pic.twitter.com/FKDO3DkRHe
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 22, 2018
page 550:
$9 billion for Govt Services Admin that oversees federal properties
Fed government spends $1.7 billion a year to maintain 770,000 empty buildings while continuing to buy new properties.
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 23, 2018
Page 580:
Post Office gets $58 million but only if it promises not to close down small, underutilized, money-losing post offices.
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 23, 2018
Page 587:
No $ for the President to request FBI background report on any individual.
If we had amendments, this would be a good place to add no $ for partisan hacks in the Intel community to unmask any American without a judicial warrant.
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 23, 2018
Page 594 sec 626: No $ to require disclosure of content of an electronic communication.
Good amendment here. It would be to also protect forced disclosure of metadata, ie phone #’s and identities of the phone callers.
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 23, 2018
I shared 600 pages tonight. I’m done tweeting them for the evening. If they insist on voting, I will vote no because it spends to much and there’s just too little time to read the bill and let everyone know what’s actually in it.
Thanks for sticking with me.
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 23, 2018
“I voted against this deficit-spending bill because I believe our promises to change Washington matter.” Paul said in a press release released early Friday morning. “I will keep fighting to hold our party to the conservative principles we had no problem proclaiming during the Obama years.”
Paul would later add:
Victory for conservatives today is that all of America now knows what a budget busting bomb this bill is. Hopefully, today’s battle will embolden conservatives to descend on Congress and demand Constitutional government.
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 23, 2018
Disclosure: I co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul.