Two Republican senators have criticized their colleagues for voting last week to support the $1.7 trillion omnibus budget measure to avert a government shutdown.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) criticized the Senate Republican leadership for not waiting until the new year, when Republicans will assume control of the House and have more negotiating leverage.
“The haughtiness of our [Senate Republican] leadership, who stated, ‘We know better than House members. This is going to pass. In a Sunday interview with John Catsimatidis on his WABC 770 AM radio program, he told Catsimatidis, “Next year, fiscal sanity will be restored.”
“I’m not buying it. Unfortunately, neither are our supporters going to buy it.”
Johnson, who voted against the big spending measure on Thursday, was among the Senate Republicans who pushed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to postpone the vote.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who, like Sen. Johnson, was one among the 29 Republicans who voted against it, chastised McConnell and other GOP leaders in the Senate for capitulating.
“Our party leadership has abandoned Republican voters, the Republican base, and the majority of Republican senators,” Lee said Catsimatidis. “It has occurred previously, but this is too often. This is the last straw for me.”
“As Republicans scratch their heads over their terrible midterm performance, they should reflect that people don’t perceive a significant distinction between themselves and Democrats,” he continued.
In the midterm elections held on November 8, Republicans secured a slim majority in the House while Democrats maintained control of the Senate.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a candidate for speaker, lobbied for a continuation of stopgap financing until January 3, when Republican members take control of the chamber.
After it passed the House in a mostly partisan vote of 225-201 on Friday, McCarthy criticized Democrats for forcing through the more than 4,000-page law, calling it “one of the most disgraceful deeds I’ve witnessed in this body.”
Johnson also blasted Senate Republicans who voted for the omnibus measure because it featured $858 billion in defense expenditure — an increase of 9.7 percent over the previous year.
“What was so unnerving about the argument was that it seemed to be taking place in a graveyard,” he told Catsimatidis. “Our debt exceeds $31 trillion. No resolution is in sight. The only reason Republicans would vote for this… is because we got the defense expenditure we wanted… “However, because to 40-year-high inflation, the $858 billion they got in this omnibus measure is actually worth just $750 billion in dollars from before the Biden administration.”
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