Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul took the floor of the Senate Thursday afternoon equipped with a blue poster board, supportive shoes and the determination to stop a budget agreement he claims is a “recipe for disaster.”
“I will continue this filibuster as long as there are enough votes here to allow it to continue,” the junior senator and Republican presidential candidate said as he took the Senate floor next to the blue poster that read, “Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 IS A TERRIBLE DEAL.”
The debt deal Paul opposes was announced Monday after several rounds of negotiation between the White House and House Republicans. The bill, which cleared the lower chamber Wednesday, proposes raising discretionary spending caps by $50 billion in fiscal 2016, $30 billion in fiscal 2017 and boosting military spending by $16 million in both years.
“It’s a rotten deal. It stinks and I haven’t met one Republican outside of Washington who thinks it’s a good idea to give unlimited borrowing power to the president and bust the budget caps,” Paul told Fox News hours before the third GOP debate Wednesday.
During that debate, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., filed cloture on the debt deal, enabling the Senate to end debate on the legislation should 60 members vote to do so. The Senate cannot vote to end debate, however, until a full calendar day has passed since cloture was filed.
Paul has until about 1 a.m. Friday morning to convince 40 of his colleagues to vote to continue debate on the budget bill. Otherwise, a 60 vote supermajority could move the deal forward.
“We’re in the middle of a filibuster,” Paul said Thursday. “This filibuster will go on to about 1:00 in the morning and then we will find out who the true conservatives in this town are.”
He continued, “If you are conservative, you will say, ‘There is no way I’m going to vote to give an unlimited power to the president to borrow money.’ If you are a conservative, you’re going to say, ‘We shouldn’t be exceeding the budget caps. If anything, we should be passing more stringent budget caps.'”
“It disappoints me greater than I can possibly express that the party that I belong to that should be the conservative party doesn’t appear to be conservative. This is a big problem,” he added.
Aides to McConnell told US News & World Report the majority leader is expected to hold the cloture vote soon after midnight hits Thursday.
“I need 41 senators to stand with me between now and 1am for my filibuster to continue. Where is your senator?” Paul tweeted around 4 p.m. ET Thursday. Each tweet since has been accompanied by the hashtag #StandWithRand, which emerged during Paul’s 13-hour filibuster in 2013 against U.S. drone policies under the Obama administration.
Paul holds the No. 8 spot in the latest Washington Examiner presidential power rankings. According to a post-debate poll by One America News Network, 43 percent of Republican voters held a less favorable opinion of the libertarian-leaning senator following Wednesday night’s GOP debate.
