(The Center Square) – President Joe Biden signed the nearly $1.7 trillion omnibus bill Thursday night, but that legislation has come under heavy fire from critics for funding a range of controversial issues.
Aside from the contents of the bill, Biden took fire for heading to St. Croix for the holidays, where the several thousand page bill was flown to him for his signature.
“The omnibus – filled with wacko climate change initiatives – is being flown more than 1,000 miles to be signed because the president couldn’t be bothered to stick around and do his job,” U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, said.
U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., highlighted some of the more controversial spending items in a string of tweets that went viral.
“And, of course, $1,438,000,000 for membership in global multilateral organizations, including the UN. The word ‘salmon’ appears 48 times in the bill. $65 million for salmon? Seems fishy,” he wrote. “On a more sinister note, here’s at least $575 million for ‘family planning’ in areas where population growth ‘threatens biodiversity.’ Malthusianism is a disturbing, anti-human ideology that should have ZERO place in any federal program.”
Biden, though, celebrated the bill, which averted a government shutdown and funded the government through September.
“Today, I signed the bipartisan omnibus bill, ending a year of historic progress,” Biden said. “It’ll invest in medical research, safety, veteran health care, disaster recovery, VAWA funding – and gets crucial assistance to Ukraine. Looking forward to more in 2023.”
The bill caused division within the GOP, where some Republicans like Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., helped move the bill through while others like Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, tried to rally opposition.
“The Republicans who gifted us the omnibus should be ashamed,” Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, wrote on Twitter. “How many of them ran saying they’d secure the border? How many ran as fiscal conservatives? They ALL did. These ‘Republicans’ LIED to their voters. Truly a DISGRACE!!”
Others criticized not just what is in the bill, but how it was passed.
“Congress now routinely passes most major legislation in a multi-thousand-page omnibus bill, crafted in secret at the end of each year, with no time to read, in a nearly empty House chamber with no floor amendments allowed and no real debate,” said Justin Amash, a former Republican representative for Michigan. “This is oligarchy, not representation.”
Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who is expected to lead the Republicans in the House in the next Congress, opposed the bill, signaling that Democratic legislation will have a hard time getting through the House for the next two years.
“For the first time in history, a bill in the House was passed without a physical quorum present – more people voted by proxy than in person,” he said. “The omnibus will damage our country, [and] the blatant disregard for Article I, Section 5 of our Constitution will forever stain this Congress. In 11 days, the new [House Republican] majority will change the direction of our country. We will also return the House back to a functioning constitutional body by repealing proxy voting once and for all.”
The republicans in the senate and the house who voted for this outrageous spending bill must be made to pay for their surrender to the dems on such wasteful spending. We need their names made public and when they are up for re-election we should continually publish their names for all to see how wasteful they are with our tax dollars.
WAKE UP AMERICA AND DO NOT RE-ELECT CONGRESS PEOPLE WHO WOULD EVEN THINK OF VOTING FOR SUCH A WASTEFUL SPENDING BILL. IF WE ARE GOING TO DEMAND THAT CONGRESS DO THE BIDDING OF WE THE PEOPLE THEN WE WILL NEED TO PUT PEOPLE IN OFFICE WHO WILL STICK TO THAT.!!!
Here are the 18 GOPers who voted yes on the omnibus:
Blunt
Boozman
Capito
Collins
Cornyn
Cotton
Graham
Inhofe
McConnell
Moran
Murkowski
Portman
Romney
Rounds
Shelby
Thune
Wicker
Young
Thank you for the list.
Several of them, ONLY DID THIS< because they already announced they are quitting, so have no FEAR OF being voted out
It amazes me how critics of Liberal policy seem always unable to stop it. Why must the Liberal monster always win??
Why? Because citizens allow them to get away with it. Most are re-elected. This fact alone speaks volumes.
BECAUSE those critics have NO BALLS… And no power it seems.
Probably because they are now the majority in America. Post baby boomers all generations of our children have been indoctrinated in the public school system following in the footsteps of the likes of Karl Marx. They no longer leave room for debate since there’s only one side to any story – theirs. If you don’t agree with them, they’ll get you terminated one way or another.
VE are da borg. You vill be assimilated! Individually is to be stamped out..
elections have consequinces even stolen ones.
Especially STOLEN ones!! Slight correction for ya.
Republicans got played again, and now they let themselves get locked into the left’s agenda for a full year rather than the usual couple of months that is common with CRs. Fools
With how weak our GOP contunually proves themselves to be, i wonder JUST EXACTLY WHY WE voted for any of them? What was the bloody point?
DITCH MITCH NOW, He must be successfully primaried.
WE would first, NEED A TRUE Cosnervative to run against him, before we could ever stage a primary…
It won’t be long before our lawmakers will be telling us we need to bite the bullet and bail out our financially failing government. While Republicans continue to help sink us deeper in debt, they tell us Medicare must be reformed because it is going broke. Todd Young is my senator and at the same time he votes to give away more of my money, he plans to gut SS.
What we need to do, is make THEM CHOKE On a bullet.
rino’s cave again and the pub party just looks on and acts like they have no control. Time for new leadership in the party or just keep circling the drain till their gone. IMO