yesterday at about this same time, I came to the floor, and I made three predictions. Even though not a single Member of this body had seen the full text of the thousand-page spending bill that we received just after 2:30 a.m. this morning, I predicted three things about that bill. I predicted that it would, No. 1, be full of corrupting earmarks--well, the bill has nearly 1,400 earmarks, and 138 pages of the more than thousand pages in this bill are dedicated to earmarks alone; two, that it wouldn't force Biden to secure the border--well, it doesn't; and three, that it would perpetuate massive deficits--it does. I really hate to say, ``I told you so.'' It is now Thursday, a little less than 48 hours before the funding deadline, and we received the 1,012-page bill at 2:30 in the morning. We are told that the only way we can avoid a shutdown is to vote for a thousand-page bill negotiated in secret and put forward at the last minute by the law firm of Schumer, McConnell, Johnson, and Jeffries. With a little less than 48 hours on the clock, we can be sure that there will be no time to read the text, to vet it with our staffs and our constituents, to debate the bill and offer amendments to improve the bill. Regardless of what State we come from or what party we are a part of, this is not what our constituents, our voters, sent us to Washington to do.…
On the recordMarch 21, 2024
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