Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told Newsmax on Tuesday that “literally no one” has read through the 4,155-page spending bill entirely as the Senate gears up for a vote later this week.
During an appearance on “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Lankford admitted that the $1.7 trillion omnibus package would likely pass with dozens of Republican senators backing it, citing fears of a government shutdown.
“There’s no time to read it — 4,000 pages. Just sit down and try to imagine 4,000 pages and what that looks like,” he explained. “There’s no way to be able to go through that in a 24-to 48-hour time period.”
The Oklahoma senator also pointed out that much of the bill’s provisions are couched in deep legislative language, with lines reading like, “On PL32-11, strike, shall and insert may in line 13. And you got to figure out what that actually says.”
“Not only can you not physically read 4,000 pages, but there’s no way to be able to reference it,” Lankford added. “The people who have read it, who’ve gone through it, are staff members for the different committees. But even they have only read that one portion. They haven’t read the other portions.”
Further, Lankford says that only about “half” of the legislation is “actually appropriations,” with another half “just extra things that have been added into the bill just because everyone knew it was going to pass.”
“The deficit this year is going to be $1 trillion. And to give you a perspective, from the beginning of the country until [former President] Ronald Reagan, we acquired $1 trillion in total debt. That’s just our single-year overspending this year,” the lawmaker stated.
“We do need to keep [the] government operating. We do need national defense. We do need all the areas and all the different policies and other things,” Lankford continued. “But we don’t need some other things. We’ve got to be able to turn those off to save money for the American people.”
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