Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul claims he hasn’t met a single Republican outside the beltway who supports lifting existing spending caps or giving President Obama unlimited borrowing power — two features in a bipartisan budget deal he’s vowed to filibuster should it make it to the Senate.
“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 Wednesday.
The Republican presidential hopeful told members of the press Tuesday, after arriving in Colorado for the third GOP debate, that he plans to do “everything in [his] power” to prevent the Senate from passing the agreement between the White House and Republican leaders which funds the government through September 2016 while increasing defense spending levels and raising the debt ceiling.
“I will filibuster and I will urge my colleagues to join my effort,” Paul said.
“I think this is a recipe for disaster,” he added Wednesday. “There’s nothing fiscally conservative about this.”
Outgoing House Speaker John Boehner said during a press conference Tuesday the agreement “isn’t perfect by any means.”
“But the alternative was a clean debt ceiling increase without any additional support for our troops and without any entitlement reform,” he noted.
Despite encountering a few hurdles Tuesday evening, the House Rules Committee cleared the budget agreement for a floor vote that is set to take place Wednesday in the lower chamber. Should the bill clear the House, as expected, it will then advance to the Senate where Paul will launch his filibuster in an attempt to kill it.
Paul will take the main debate stage at 8 p.m. ET Wednesday alongside nine other Republican candidates. The libertarian-leaning senator, who holds the No. 6 spot in the latest Washington Examiner presidential power rankings, says his strategy for the third debate is to convince Americans he’s “the only fiscal conservative” in the GOP field.
