The much-derided omnibus spending bill was inevitable when Republicans decided to make Trump the centerpiece of their 2022 Congressional election campaigns.
House Republicans, and even some dissident Senate Republicans like Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida), are whining about the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill is about to become law; but really, they have no one to blame but themselves.
These “MAGA Republicans” tied the party’s political fate to one, Donald J. Trump, and, as a result, lost big-time in the 2022 midterm elections. The GOP lost one Senate seat and now is in the Senate minority, while badly underperforming in House elections nationwide.
GOP Disarray. Moreover, House Republicans cannot even agree on whom their leader should be. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California) should be the next Speaker of the House; but that is far from assured, since a renegade group of kamikaze Republicans seems intent on blowing up the House GOP majority.
So you can understand why most Senate Republicans, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), are eager to pass legislation now—before House Republicans set up their circular firing squad and begin taking aim at each other.
“No question, there are many Senate Republicans who worry that the new House Republican majority will not be able to pass spending bills with 218 Republican votes come January or February,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) told radio host Hugh Hewitt.
Consequently, he explained,
Speaker McCarthy would have to go to the Democrats and ask for their votes to pass a bill. And if that were to happen, then the Democrats, obviously would demand a ransom in the form of tens of billions of dollars in new spending that they didn’t get in this bill.
So there’s no question that many Senate Republicans think that, right now, the best deal possible—not just for December, but also in the new year— would be a bill that holds the Democrats to the defense budget they just voted for last week. while also preventing the domestic spending budget from going up beyond what Joe Biden requested.
The Omnibus. Sure, the omnibus spending bill includes many odious things (such as limitations on border enforcement) that delight far-left, “progressive” Democrats. But that was the inevitable result of the GOP’s weakened position stemming from the party’s awful performance in the 2022 mid-terms. And for that, you can thank Donald Trump, who remains one of the most despised and unpopular political figures in America today.
Maybe Republicans will think twice next time before they decide to make Trump and his idiotic desire to re-litigate his 2020 election defeat the centerpiece of their Congressional campaigns. That was a bad political move for which the GOP paid a steep political and legislative price.
Policy Wins. The good news is that thanks to the political and legislative savvy of Sen. McConnell, Senate Republicans were able to extract some significant policy wins in the omnibus spending bill.
As Sen. Cotton alluded to, for instance, the defense budget has been significantly increased after being savaged by the Biden inflation and a decades-long modernization holiday.
Aid to Ukraine also has been secured. This is especially important because House Republicans have intimated that they might stop or curtail aid to Ukraine in the name of fiscal restraint. Now, though, thanks to the omnibus spending bill, House Republicans will have limited room for destructive legislative maneuver.
The bottom line: House Republicans, and dissident Senate Republicans like Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida), are getting what they deserve. They’re getting their just desserts. They’re getting their comeuppance.
These Republicans made Trump and his selfish political obsessions the focal point of the 2022 election. The American people said, “no thanks”; the GOP lost; and the party now is at a decided political and legislative disadvantage.
The omnibus spending bill is far from perfect, but it reflects the hard cold reality of what the Republican Party can achieve now, legislatively, given its foolish and costly embrace of Donald Trump.
Feature photo credit: Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) (L) secured the best deal possible in the wake of GOP election losses caused by the Republicans’ enthusiastic embrace of Donald Trump (R). Courtesy of People magazine (Oliver Contreras/Bloomberg via Getty Images).