On Wednesday, Senator Rand Paul appeared on Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow” and blasted Republicans for allowing themselves to be “emasculated” by agreeing a spending bill to fund the government through 2023.
Paul told FNC’s Larry Kudlow, “This brings upon us the lie that Republicans really are fiscally conservative. The Democrats aren’t. They will not pretend to be fiscally conservative. Not one of them up here gives a darn about the debt.”
He continued, “The Republicans all profess to be, but when you make them vote on the PAYGO resolution, pay as you go, that we can’t have new spending without offsetting it, they always vote to exempt it. So the omnibus will be 3,000 pages. We’ll get it two hours before they want to pass it. No one will read it. But hidden in the 3,000 pages will be we’re going to wave PAYGO.”
“It would take 41 votes. Forty-one votes would stop the big spending. If 41, one of us said no and held our ground until there was a compromise, we could force Democrats to reduce spending. We have completely and totally abdicated the power of the purse. Republicans are emasculated,” Paul said. “They have no power, and they are unwilling to gain that power back.”
“The only way they can get it is to divide the spending into 12 bills and then decide to hold one of them hostage – or two of them hostage – and then apply policy changes in the House,” he explained. “They’ve got to do it, they’ve got to capture this, and we’d have to do the budget the way it’s supposed to be.”
Paul added, “Budget 12 appropriation bills and then try to attach some policy, like removing the 87,000 IRS agents from the IRS budget. When we try to do it in one bill, the Republicans don’t have the intestinal fortitude – they always collapse – and they fear shutting the government down, so no policy objectives ever get added.”
“The only way we can do it is if we do what we’re supposed to do: budget 12 appropriation bills and then decide which ones you want to fight over,” he reiterated.
In other words, unless Republicans put on their big boy britches and fight to do things correctly, our hands are completely tied.
For Paul’s full statement, check out the clip below:
