On Thursday, the Senate approved the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill which will fund the government until the end of September of 2023. The 4,000-page bill was approved with a 68-29 vote with 29 Republicans objecting. The Republican coalition of 18 votes was spearheaded by Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY). On his podcast Firebrand, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) interviewed Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) about the omnibus bill.
At the beginning of the interview, Reps. Gaetz and Bishop discussed the language of the bill which disallows any of the funds to be used towards border security, other than “Border Patrol processing.”
“They’re processing more people into the country to turn them loose faster,” stated Bishop, in which Gaetz replied, “That processing is unidirectional. They’re not processing them out like they should be. They only processing them in and it affects the morale of the Border Patrol to see that they’re not able to actually do their jobs.”
Addressing the 18 Republicans who backed the measure, Gaetz said, “I don’t know how any Republican could vote for that with all the focus on the border…for something that literally ties the hands of Customs and Border Patrol.”
Both Gaetz and Bishop laughed at the dichotomy, however, that the bill includes $410 million towards the border security of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Oman. Gaetz said that anyone Republican that votes for the bill should not be public with their opinion about the border because “they obviously don’t give a damn.”
The bill also includes another large sum to the Ukrainian defense fund. With $47 million allocated to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in their fight against Russia, Bishop points out that the United States has now dedicated over $100 million to the Ukrainians and compares that number to the apparent $84 million defense budget of the Russians.
Overall, the bill includes $858 billion for defense and $787 billion for “non-defense domestic programs” according to Fox News.
For the full clip, look below:
WATCH: @RepDanBishop EXPOSES some of the worst elements of the $1.7 Trillion omnibus bill 👇 pic.twitter.com/k5aVW9y5Av
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) December 22, 2022
