Two members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus slammed the two-year budget plan reached Wednesday by the Senate, with Alabama GOP Rep. Mo Brooks declaring, "I'm not only a no, I'm a hell no."
"It is a debt-junkie's wildest dream — with all the spending of money that we don't have, we have to borrow to get and can't afford to pay back," Brooks, first elected to the House in 2010, told Neil Cavuto on Fox News.
"You can see that reflected in the credit markets, where we're going to embark on an unending stream of annual deficits — money taken out of the credit markets — money that's no longer there that drives up interest rates.
"It is unfathomable to me that we want to bankrupt a country that took centuries of our ancestors to build, but this legislation goes a long ways to bringing about an American debilitating insolvency and bankruptcy.
"I'm shocked how bad and how irresponsible this piece of legislation is."
The Freedom Caucus later tweeted its opposition to the deal:
The two-year agreement, totaling nearly $400 billion, would provide almost $300 billion more to the Pentagon and domestic programs over current spending limits.
It also would finance infrastructure projects and efforts to battle opioid abuse.
But the deal does not include President Donald Trump's $25 billion request for a wall on the southern U.S. border, though "it also doesn't rule out" the financing, a top Republican Senate aide told Newsmax.
The agreement is likely to be added to a stopgap spending bill that passed the House on Tuesday, aimed at averting a government shutdown Thursday at midnight.
The deal was announced by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
"This idea that we have unlimited amounts of money to borrow is fiction," Brooks told Cavuto. "It's dangerous — and it needs to stop here."
His Freedom Caucus colleague, South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford, said the budget plan's contribution to the nation's rising debt would cost Republicans in this year's midterm elections.
"There will be a political price to pay," Sanford, in his third term, told Jake Tapper on CNN. "Ultimately, it is a big strategic threat, what comes next on the national debt front.
"We have a profound spending problem," he added. "If, at the end of the day Republicans, own the tab on the way it has increased, I think it is a political problem as well."
Other Freedom Caucus members took to Twitter to oppose the deal:
The Club for Growth also opposed the budget deal, saying "the GOP establishment wants to speed up the big-government freight train with the help of big-spending liberals on the other side of the aisle."
"Nowhere in this deal are the $54 billion in spending cuts outlined in President [Donald] Trump's budget," the group said in a statement. "Instead, the big-government freight train is running out of control."
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