WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Congressman Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ-04) released the following statement announcing he will be voting no on the massive $1.1 trillion spending measure, H.R. 2029 the Consolidated Appropriations Act (omnibus), scheduled for a vote in the House on Friday, December 18:
Today, U.S. Congressman Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ-04) released the following statement announcing he will be voting no on the massive $1.1 trillion spending measure, H.R. 2029 the Consolidated Appropriations Act (omnibus), scheduled for a vote in the House on Friday, December 18:
“Once again I find myself infuriated about out-of-control, wasteful spending and a lack of leadership in Washington D.C. No member can actually read 2,242 pages of text and over 1,000 pages of explanatory material in 54 hours. I am not Nancy Pelosi and I will not vote to pass a bill just to find out later what it contains. Such actions are irresponsible and silly. I wish that I could put all the blame for this flawed bill on big spending Democrats who are ignorant of the fiscal crisis within which we live, but I can’t. Congress is controlled by Republicans. Yet, somehow this is the worst omnibus ‘deal’ for Republicans since I’ve been here.
“The American people gave Congress a clear mandate to reduce spending and shrink the size of the federal government as well as to rein in a lawless and dangerously incompetent Obama Administration. Except for passage of the sequester in August 2011, no other law has been enacted that has made meaningful cuts to federal spending. This irresponsible bill blows through those budget caps established just a few short years ago. This terrible deal includes no new riders to hold this rogue administration accountable and gives Democrats everything they wanted and more. Westerners and conservatives are rightfully outraged that our negotiators gave away the farm in this bill.
“It doesn’t have to be this way. We must have the courage to fix our broken budget process and return to regular order. I refuse to go along with the status quo of more wasteful federal spending and I refuse to let the Obama Administration continue to force their misguided ideology through regulatory overreach. As long as I represent hard-working Arizonans, I will never stop fighting to end this madness. This is my line in the sand and I refuse to back down. If we have to stay here through Christmas to get the people’s work done, then so be it. But I can’t in good conscious support a bill that abandons the priorities of my constituents and that will be extremely harmful to future generations.”
But the bad far outweighs the good, and overall, this bill misses many opportunities to enact common sense policy reforms. The omnibus increases spending by $50 billion more than is authorized and agreed to under the Budget Control Act of 2011. This alone is reason to reject this bill. Furthermore, the omnibus does not defund the president’s executive amnesty orders and fails to prevent funds for sanctuary cities, both abdications of the power of the purse. The bill failed to include a provision blocking refugees from Syria from being resettled in the United States until we have a system that can properly vet them. Worse yet, the bill allows the president to bring in as many refugees as he wants and allows access for these refugees to welfare and entitlements at taxpayer expense.
It increases Internal Revenue Service (IRS) spending by over $200 million and includes a $500 million increase for the wasteful and inefficient Head Start program. The bill increases funding for the EPA $717.73 million above the House passed bill. The bill increases funding by $1.2 billion for the Department of Education. The bill fails to block funding for Planned Parenthood and will allow hundreds of millions to continue to flow to the organization's coffers ($528.4 million in federal funding last year alone). The bill egregiously extends the wind PTC and solar ITC for five years. The bill extends LWCF for three years with no meaningful reforms even though the program is now unauthorized. The bill includes $226.8 million for new land acquisition and to lock-up more land, even though the federal government can’t even manage the land it currently owns.
The bill bails out the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by increasing the U.S. quota. This IMF will now have access to even more taxpayer dollars in order to fund bailouts of other irresponsible governments like Greece.
To make matters worse, there were countless policy riders that passed both the House and Senate that somehow failed to make it into the final omnibus bill.
