On the recordMarch 22, 2018
I wish to talk a little bit about election security, but on a day like today, I have to at least mention where we are with the giant omnibus bill that got dropped on us last night at about 8:30--about 2,300 pages of legislative text--to try to deal with all of government spending, all of discretionary spending. If people don't know what an omnibus is, it is where we are supposed to pass 12 individuals bills dealing with 12 different topics of our spending. An omnibus is when you take all 12 of those and just do it at once. It is supposed to be the exception to the rule, but for the last 17 years, we have done some version of an omnibus. Today's vote will be the 18th. We have 2,300 pages with technical legislative language and less than 24 hours to be able to go through it. There is no way to be able to discover what all is in it. There is another historic event that has happened this past week, as well, which I think connects to this omnibus. Last Friday, the Treasury Department announced that we just crossed over $21 trillion in total debt--$21 trillion. I have had some folks who have caught me and said: Now that we have gone over $21 trillion and it looks like we could be rapidly approaching $1 trillion of deficit this year alone--which would mean that in the next 12 to 14 months, we will go from $21 trillion to $22 trillion in total debt--gosh, that looks terrible. It has to be this Republican tax plan that is causing it.…





