Rand Paul’s Budget Warning for GOP Leadership

Different cast, same script.

Donald Trump’s victory in last year’s presidential election ended divided government in Washington. But Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Republican lawmakers remain too terrified of a possible government shutdown to stand up to Democrats’ spending demands.

“Do you keep it open, and borrow a million dollars a minute, or do you use the leverage of deadline and say, ‘Only pass spending bills that have reform’?”

Paul said Thursday on “The Laura Ingraham Show” that GOP leaders will likely sell out conservatives and work with Democrats to pass a spending bill before a funding deadline Friday.

“Do you keep it open, and borrow a million dollars a minute, or do you use the leverage of deadline and say, ‘Only pass spending bills that have reform’?” he said. “So I’m in the latter category. If there’s no reform, I’m not voting for anybody.”

Paul noted that Congress has barely started working on the spending bills for the fiscal year that starts October 1 and still is dealing with spending for the fiscal year that’s now more than half-finished.

“I think we’re becoming weaker each day as we go deeper into debt,” he said.

Paul said the Trump administration wants more defense spending, and the Democrats want to keep subsidies flowing to the health insurance companies.

“They’ll probably both get what they want, and those of us who are concerned about the deficit will get the shaft, and we will be told, ‘You’ve got to vote for more military spending and you’re going to have to vote for taxpayer subsidies for Obamacare,'” he said. “And frankly, I think that’s the opposite, that’s the opposite of what we need.”

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Trump has suggested that he might stop defending a lawsuit challenging the legality of cost-sharing subsidies that the government pays to health insurance companies, to help them pay out-of-pocket expenses for lower-income customers under the Affordable Care Act. A judge ruled that the payments are illegal because Congress never appropriated the money. If Trump stops defending the lawsuit on appeal, that order would take effect.

But Democrats have demanded that the spending bill due this week include those payments. Paul said Republicans likely will cave.

“Realize, there’s going to be Obamacare taxpayers subsidies in here, the same subsidies I’ve been railing about,” he said.

Paul said these deadlines represent the few times that conservatives actually have leverage to win concessions. He said a fight over raising the government’s borrowing limit during former President Barack Obama’s presidency allowed conservatives to press the case for a balanced-budget amendment. Although they did not get that, they did win spending restraints known as the sequester.

Those reforms proved short-lived, however, as Democrats favoring more domestic spending teamed up with Republican defense hawks who wanted more Pentagon spending to bust through the caps.

Paul also lamented the inability or unwillingness of House Republicans to pass a full repeal of Obamacare. He said he appreciates negotiations led by the conservative House Freedom Caucus to improve the bill but added that he is not sure he could support it.

“The Freedom Caucus has done yeoman’s work. They’ve made this terrible, terrible, rotten, no-good bill less bad. And that’s sort of the way I see it now,” he said. “For me, it’s still difficult, you know, to think about supporting a bill that has taxpayer money going to insurance companies.”

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Paul said insurance companies saw profits jump from about $6 billion to $15 billion under Obamacare. He said they complain about losing money in the individual market but make up for it in the group market. A better approach, he said, is to allow people without insurance from their employers to form buying co-ops to negotiate better rates.

Despite the work of the Freedom Caucus, Paul said, the bill still has billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to insurance companies.

“And now we’re sort of accepting the premise of Obamacare and just spending a little less on it,” he said.