Rand Paul And The Shocking HR 1625 Omnibus Spending Bill

March 24, 2018 in News by Ken

Image result for size of HR 1625 Omnibus Spending Bill

source: newswithviews.com

Kudos to Rand Paul for actually reading the omnibus spending bill and communicating with the American public about its ugly, ugly contents.  Some of the pork spending Rand highlights include:

  • $12M for scholarships to Lebanon
  • $20M for Middle East Partnership Initiative Scholarship Program
  • $12M in military funding for Vietnam
  • $3.5M in nutrition assistance to Laos
  • $15M in developmental assistance to China
  • $10M for Women LEOs in Afghanistan
  • $10M for disadvantaged Egyptian students
  • $1.37B (that’s BILLION) for contributions to International Organizations
  • $51M to promote International Family Planning and Reproductive Health
  • $7M promoting International Conservation
  • $10M for UN Environmental Programs
  • $5M for Vietnam Educational Foundation Grants
  • $2.579M for committees on Security and Co-operation in Europe
  • $500M to Jordan for a border wall (another source reported)
  • $1M for the World Meteorological Organization
  • $218M for Promoting Democracy Development in Europe (yep..the birthplace of democracy needs promoting)
  • $25M for International Religious Freedom
  • $15M to USAID for promoting international higher education between universities
  • $2.696B for International Disaster Assistance

(taken from his tweets)

Now if I did my rudimentary math right, that’s almost five billion dollars (out of $1.3T) just on those handfuls of examples. These things seriously need to be looked at.  How are we giving away billions of dollars to other countries, while our own nation is in over $21 Trillion in debt and there are glaring problems at home?

Apparently there’s also $6 Billion going to the National Science Foundation with ludicrous research projects being funded by our taxpaying money for things like studying if Japanese quail are more sexually promiscuous if they’re on cocaine.  See a great highlight of more ridiculousness here.

It took well over two hours for Rand’s office to print the 2,232 page Omnibus spending bill.  Rand was photographed holding the 4-5 ream document and said, “Well here it is, all 2,232 budget-busting pages. The House already started votes on it. The Senate is expected to soon. No one has read it. Congress is broken…”

Rand was good at keeping interested citizens in the loop when he tweeted nuggets like:  “Page 376 of terrible, rotten, no-good budget busting bill:  I found it! I found it! Border security, what President Trump wanted! no . . .wait a minute section says Defense can spend what funds it determines to enhance the border security of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Tunisia”

Or this one:  “eyes getting tired but really someone should read this beast. Page 392 sec 9007: “no $ shall be spent “for the permanent stationing of US forces in Afghanistan” Wonder what they meant by permanent? Some might argue that after 16 years we approaching the definition of permanent.”

And would we even know such details if Rand hadn’t pointed them out:  “Page 430 of “crumni-bus:” Good news. The government is going to “earn” $350 million by selling oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Bad news is the $ won’t go to reduce the $21 trillion debt. The $ will be instead be spent elsewhere by the Federal government.”

Well you can see his whole strand of Tweet updates as he waded through the massive bill here.

A decent overview of the bill can be read here.

We need to keep in mind this was a spending bill to get us through the fiscal year, and it expires September 30, 2018.  Trump was adamant in declaring he would not be signing another bill like this in the future.  He expressed disgust with much of the bill, and that his primary motive was to keep the military funded.  (Incidentally, active duty received a 2.4% pay increase.)

Opponents of the bill argue that it practically gave the Democrats everything they wanted.  Conservative opponents were furious Planned Parenthood was not defunded, and yet one Congressman’s office explained to me that the automatic renewal for PP was removed in this bill, which enables the renewal to be at the discretion of the President.  If that is correct, that is good news indeed and may end up being a significant victory for those in support of life and babies.  I still need to follow up on that and see if it’s accurate.

Read the story here