House Republicans have damned the $1.7 trillion finalized spending bill as “an indefensible assault” on Americans.
Every Republican should be a NO on the omnibus spending bill.
— Congressman Byron Donalds (@RepDonaldsPress) December 19, 2022
A group of nine House Republicans and three members of Congress-elect led by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) is asking Republican senators not to support the bill, which is proposed to fund the Biden Administration through September 2023.
A Monday letter addressed to “Senate Republican Colleagues” urged GOP senators not to vote for the bill. The letter accused executive branch agencies and “Biden bureaucrats” of “abuse of power and dereliction of duty.”
“This slated ‘omnibus spending bill’ is an indefensible assault on the American people. It is an assault on the separation of powers. It is an assault on fiscal responsibility. It is an assault on basic civic decency. And a vote for any omnibus in the remaining days of a Democrat-led government is a vote in favor of that assault,” Roy and the group’s letter wrote.
The omnibus bill includes about $45 billion in emergency support to Ukraine. The proposed funds are aimed at helping communities across the country as they try to recover from hurricanes, drought, and other natural disasters.
However, Republican leaders have said that the priority of the United States government should be its people and that securing the southern border is a better use of the United States funds. To them, the omnibus bill disregards the crisis at the border and only serves to empower Democrats.
For some, the USA’s past provision of $68 billion in military, economic, and humanitarian aid for Ukraine should suffice.
GOP leaders have also criticized the Biden Administration’s process as it points out that the country is deep in debt already.
Republicans fear that if the bill is passed, Americans – mostly those in border states like Texas and Arizona – will not be getting an answer to their requests for “the restoration of order and sanity at our border.”
“They are tired of having to personally pay to manage what the federal government is supposed to be doing,” the group of Republicans wrote.
Asides from the Ukraine aid, the spending plan also covers the TikTok ban, Telehealth extension, security boost for former House speakers, $2.5 million in funding for a residential security system program for senators, a bipartisan deal to end a Medicaid policy that provides states with more funding and prohibited them from taking residents off federally funded insurance, a bipartisan deal to revamp the Electoral Count Act, among many other inclusions.
Republican reps that signed the letter criticizing the bill include Reps. Dan Bishop (R-NC), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Scott Perry (R-PA), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Matt Rosendale (R-MT), Andrew Clyde (R-GA), Ralph Norman (R-SC), and Bryon Donalds (R-FL). Representatives-elect Andy Ogles (R-TN), Eli Crane (R-AZ), and Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) also added their signatures.
Not stopping at encouraging GOP senators to vote against the bill, the Republicans threatened to oppose any “legislative priority” of the senators that vote for the bill if it gets passed by the Senate.
The Senate will vote on the legislation before midnight on Friday as the government will be shutting down going into the Christmas break.
