Senator Rand Paul was not happy. A 652-page budget and appropriations deal, worked out by congressional leadership, was unveiled at midnight Wednesday, a mere 24 hours before the shutdown deadline Paul was so incensed by it that he decided to trigger a brief government shutdown. Are we to be conservative all the time, or only when we’re in the minority?” Paul asked in a defiant floor speech Thursday
Senator Rand Paul was not happy. A 652-page budget and appropriations deal, worked out by congressional leadership, was unveiled at midnight Wednesday, a mere 24 hours before the shutdown deadline
Paul was so incensed by it that he decided to trigger a brief government shutdown.
“Are we to be conservative all the time, or only when we’re in the minority?” Paul asked in a defiant floor speech Thursday night. His one-man filibuster of a two-year budget deal led to a final vote on the package being held nearly two hours after Thursday’s midnight government shutdown deadline had already passed.
It passed the Senate easily with a tally of 71-28.
The bill then went to the House, where lawmakers cast their votes at 5:14 Friday morning. It passed that chamber with a vote of 240-186, ending the brief government spending lapse.
Senator Paul objected to the package’s two year budget proposal which expands the budgetary caps on military and domestic spending set in place by the Budget Control Act of 2011. Paul sought an amendment that would have preserved the budget caps. “I’m asking for one amendment. It takes fifteen minutes,” Paul tweeted.
Arguing that if Paul received a vote on his amendment, everybody would want an amendment, Republican leaders refused. Ultimately, neither side budged. Without Paul’s support for a unanimous consent request (where one Senator can object) to move the vote up to an earlier time, the procedure-restrained chamber had to wait until after midnight, thus shutting down the government, to pass the bill.
The two-year budget deal lifts the Budget Control Act’s caps to allow for nearly $300 billion more in discretionary spending, directed to both defense and nondefense funding priorities. It would also provide government funding for six weeks, through March 23, to give appropriators time to draft spending bills for the rest of the year, approve more than $80 billion in disaster relief, $20 billion for infrastructure, $6 billion to combat the opioid crisis, and suspend the debt limit for one year.
There was some uncertainty in the House leading up to the vote, with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi urging her members to vote against the bill. Other Democratic leaders, however, left wiggle room for their members to vote in favor of the measure. And many did. As one Democratic lawmaker told Talking Point Memo ’s Joseph Cameron, “I’m really hoping this passes over my no vote.” In the end, 73 Democrats bucked Pelosi by voting “yes,” including rivals Tim Ryan and Kathleen Rice.
Because fiscal hawks in the Republican party were opposed to the deal—Republican Study Committee Chair Mark Walker said it would add “insurmountable debt crippling any hope of pursuing the American dream”—Republican leaders needed Democratic support to get the bill across the finish line. Progressive Democrats who have called for a replacement for the expiring Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program were frustrated because the budget deal did not include a DACA fix. And House Speaker Paul Ryan declined to assuage their concerns by promising to bring the issue to the House floor in an open amendments process.
Still, some Democrats were pleased with the product. In a statement Thursday afternoon explaining why he would support the deal, Kentucky Democrat John Yarmuth said, “If Democrats cannot support this kind of compromise, Congress will never function.”
