After passing through the U.S. Senate with the help of 18 Republicans, including outgoing Sen. Richard Shelby, the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill now goes to the House of Representatives, where U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville) said he expects a similar scenario to play out thanks to the "debt junky wing of the Republican Party."
"This omnibus bill is so bad in so many different ways I'm not sure where to start," Brooks told Phil Williams on Thursday's episode of Rightside Radio.
"It is financially irresponsible," he continued. "It's going to increase our deficit, according to The Heritage Foundation, by $2.7 trillion over the next decade. As you know, our accumulated debt is one of the drivers of inflation. It makes a whole lot more sense … to postpone the big fight for about three weeks when the Republicans control the House. But unfortunately, the cadre of debt junky senators led by our own senator Richard Shelby, they're pushing it through, and in all likelihood, it's going to pass … if not today, then tomorrow."
Brooks said the omnibus package was little more than "political payback" for Shelby and others to return favors to special interest groups.
"Mitch McConnell and Richard Shelby raised a lot of money, tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars, from special interest groups, and it is this type of legislation that is used to pay back those special interest groups for the money that they funneled into campaign coffers to help various groups win reelection," Brooks said.
He went on to say that waiting until the last minute before Christmas, well past the September 30 deadline, to approve the package was also part of the plan — a tried and true method of getting lawmakers who want to go home for the holidays to approve measures they would have normally rejected.
Brooks said, "They have always pushed these spending issues until right before Christmas, right before New Years, when congressmen and senators, in order to get out of Dodge, are willing to vote for a lot of bad things so they can spend the holidays home with their families."
Brooks put part of the blame on those special interest groups that he said are able to control certain legislators like "puppets."
"If you want to be the chairman of a major committee in the House of Representatives — a major committee is defined as one that the special interests care a lot about because they can do a lot of damage through them — then the minimum bid price is $1 million. Literally, $1 million… If you can get that $1 million from your constituents … that forces you to go to special interests, who demand a quid pro quo. And so you're seeing the payback to those special interests right now with this omnibus and other types of must-pass legislation."
To connect with the author of this story, or to comment, email daniel.taylor@1819news.com.
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