Toomey: $1.3 Trillion Spending Bill Is 'Horrendous'
Philadelphia (CBS) - President Donald Trump signed late last week the $1.3 trillion spending bill after both the House and Senate pushed it through. Sen. Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania joined The Dom Giordano Program on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT to discuss why he was absent for the vote.
"I had a family obligation so I missed the vote itself, but I was very clear at the time and I have been since; it's a terrible, terrible bill. It spends an enormous amount of money, it's just a blowout. It's loaded with wasteful spending. We had [about] than 24 hours or less to even look at it. You couldn't even digest it, couldn't even begin to. You couldn't offer amendments to get rid of some of the wasteful spending. It's horrendous, and there's no way I could support it."
Toomey explained this bill was rushed through to help military and defense spending, and the requirement for 60 votes in the Senate required Republicans compromise for defense spending with Democrats demand for welfare spending.
"We're going to spend what it takes to keep this country safe. But in order to pass the legislation in the Senate, because of Senate rules it requires 60 votes. There are 51 Republican senators, and in order to get at least nine Democrats, the Democrats insisted 'OK, you want more money for defense, we want more money for all kinds of welfare programs and domestic programs.' And that was the fundamental battle, over how much more money has to spend in all of these other categories that these Democrats insisted on in order to get the defense increase we all felt was necessary."
Toomey went on that he is not a fan of doing legislation this way, and there are other and better ways for Congress to do this.
"What we should be doing is funding the Government through a series of separate, discrete incremental bills that fund the various portions. Lets pass a defense appropriation bill that only funds defense. Then lets take up some of these other domestic bills and lets have an argument and a fight over those."
