Seven Republican senators on Thursday voted against advancing a six-bill funding package to keep the government open past Friday, citing concerns about the ballooning federal deficit and what they saw as the failure of the so-called appropriations minibus to significantly cut spending
Sens. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ashley Moody (R-Fla.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) voted against a motion to advance the bill, even though it had the strong support of Senate GOP leaders.
The package, which was blocked on a 45-55 vote, would have failed regardless of how the Republicans voted. It needed 60 votes to advance and did not pick up any Democratic support.
Paul said his opposition to the package was driven by “a general complaint about how much government spends.”
“Most of the spending levels have come back either at last year’s level or above. Last year we had a deficit of about $1.8 [trillion], $1.9 trillion. If you vote for these levels, it’s sort of a belief that you think what we’re spending is OK,” he said.
“I think what we’re spending is too much,” he added.
Scott said he opposes Democratic demands to pull funding for the Department of Homeland Security out of the funding package after Democrats negotiated a variety of spending victories for their own side.
He also pointed to what he called wasteful spending in the package.
“I don’t like the bill. I don’t like the six-bill package because it doesn’t balance the budget and it’s got all this wasteful spending through all these earmarks,” he said.
“Now, they’re talking about proceeding to cut out the ICE portion of the funding. I don’t support that, I support ICE. I think it’s crazy that at the last minute Democrats think they can dictate and shut down the [Homeland Security] funding,” Scott said, using an abbreviation for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“They want all their wasteful spending, they don’t want to balance the budget. Then they don’t want to fund the thing they caused. … They allowed all these criminals into our country and now ICE is doing their job, and [Democrats] don’t want to fund it,” he said.
Moody declined to say why she voted against the package, telling The Hill she didn’t have time to talk as she walked into a lunch meeting.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (S.D.) cast the eighth Republican vote against the bill, but he did so on purely procedural grounds. He cast a last-minute vote against the motion to end debate on proceeding to the bill so that he could enter a “motion to recommit” in order to have flexibility to bring it back to the floor quickly.
