POLITICS: Mike Lee on Spending Bill Process: ‘One of the Most Deeply Disturbing Things That I Experience’ as a Senator

LifeNews: 490 Babies Saved From Abortion in Latest 40 Days for Life Prayer Event
March 27, 2018
If You Want a Beautiful Mass, You Need Beautiful Liturgical Music
March 27, 2018

Photo:  Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)

By Craig Millward, CNSNews, March 26, 2018

Craig MillwardOn Mark Levin’s Fox News show “Life, Liberty and Levin” on Sunday, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) criticized the process of passing the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill last week by saying “it is one of the most deeply disturbing things that I experience as a member of the United States Senate.”

“[M]ost of the American people are effectively disenfranchised from this process because their elected senators and representatives are outside of that room where a small handful of leaders is negotiating this bill in private,” Lee said. “By the time it comes out into public, there isn’t time to debate it, discuss it, amend it, to improve it.”

“There isn’t time to receive adequate feedback from the American people, and the members themselves who are being asked to vote on this are themselves not fully aware of what’s in it,” he said. “It’s wrong.”

Lee continued, “And it will continue until this process doesn’t work. In the meantime, it’s kind of nice to be one of those few people in that room negotiating it. You get more powerful every time it happens. But it’s really bad for the American people, and it is one of the most deeply disturbing things that I experience as a member of the United States Senate.”

Below is a transcript of Sen. Mike Lee’s remarks from “Life, Liberty and Levin”

Mark Levin: “I want to turn to something that’s just occurred and that’s this budget process and appropriation process in the United States congress. Jim Jordan has said that, the congressman from Ohio, and freedom caucus member, that they had 17 hours between the time a 2200-page bill, which had been written in secret by the leadership, was presented to the House of Representatives, and to vote. And so really nobody, even Evelyn Wood herself, wouldn’t have been able to get through that on time. Same thing is happening on the Senate side. As a matter of fact, you weren’t allowed to offer amendments and, you know, just as an American citizen, I look at this. We vote for our representatives to participate in this process, plus we would like to participate in this process, there’s supposed to be various appropriation bills that we can look at and so forth. What do you make of all this?”

Sen. Mike Lee: “2232 pages. That’s how long this spending bill was. It takes a long time even to get the fastest printers to print that out physically. It takes much longer to read 2232 pages of legislative text than it does a fast-paced novel. And so you’re right. Members voting on this don’t have a chance adequately to read it to understand what’s in it. Perhaps even more importantly, these words are negotiated in private by a small handful of legislative leaders. To the exclusion of everyone else. Meaning most of the American people are effectively disenfranchised from this process because their elected Senators and Representatives are outside of that room where a small handful of leaders is negotiating this bill in private. By the time it comes out into public, there isn’t time to debate it, discuss it, amend it, to improve it.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), holding the 2,232-page omnibus spending bill, which 
Congress passed and President Trump signed into law on March 23, 2018. (YouTube)

“There isn’t time to receive adequate feedback from the American people, and the members themselves who are being asked to vote on this are themselves not fully aware of what’s in it. It’s wrong. And it will continue until this process doesn’t work. In the meantime, it’s kind of nice to be one of those few people in that room negotiating it. You get more powerful every time it happens. But it’s really bad for the American people, and it is one of the most deeply disturbing things that I experience as a member of the United States Senate.”

Levin: “And it’s confounding, because in the republic, you have to wonder how you undo this, how do you unravel this? I get this calls on the radio all the time. What do we do? What do we do? I’m not sure what we do. We can talk about electing the right people. We think we do elect the right people. We have the tea party revolution, we had majorities now in the House and the Senate. Republican president. And it’s my understanding this spending bill, even in percentage increases, is the largest in modern history, is that right?”

Lee: “Yes. And look, it’s the nature of governments. It’s the nature of human beings, as they accumulate power to want to accumulate more power. When they have access to the ability to do something, it’s their tendency to do it. If they can.

“The only way we’re going to change this is to make this process, this formula, this barbaric mechanism for funding a $4 trillion government, will no longer work. It will no longer work when the American people call their Senators and Representatives and make clear to them they do not want them to vote for a measure that’s the result of this kind of product. They certainly don’t want to vote for increased spending, especially when they themselves don’t know and by design cannot know where the spending is going.”

https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/mike-lee-spending-bill-process-one-most-deeply-disturbing-things-i-experience