As the Senate prepared to pass a spending bill in the wee hours of Friday night, members had a bipartisan take on moves by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who, for most of the evening, spent his time blocking requests from his colleagues to move directly to a vote rather than go ahead with a doomed-from-the-start mission that resulted in a partial government shutdown.
Senators roundly expressed their frustration with Paul, who began at 6 p.m. by denying unanimous consent requests from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and others and delayed proceedings for seven hours. The move forced a 1 a.m. vote on the package that he says will explode the deficit and is the opposite of fiscal responsibility the GOP decried during the Obama administration.
“A colossal waste of everyone’s time, right?” said a visibly frustrated Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., as he made his way from the Senate subway to the chamber. “He never gets a result.”
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., laid out his exasperation with Paul for all to see on his way up to vote as he donned a Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl champions lid and lamented that he couldn’t make it to the parade earlier Thursday.
“It’s 1 in the morning. Am I upset that the government is shut down?” Coons said, asking rhetorical questions. “Do I want to go convey my sentiments to my colleague from Kentucky? Yeahhh.”
“He’s a wonderful colleague who has mastered the art of ticking off his colleagues,” Coons said soon after.
The bill passed by a 71-28 vote, with 16 Republicans voting against the bill that now heads over to the House, where a vote is expected sometime between 3 and 5 a.m.
The bill funds the government through March 23. Aside from funding the government, the bill sets an increase in federal spending caps for the next two years — Congress was expected to use the next few weeks writing the spending bill that fits those caps. It also suspends the nation’s borrowing limit for one year, allowing it to borrow whatever it wants. And that in particular is what irked Paul.
However, it was Paul’s actions Thursday evening that evoked annoyed responses from his Senate colleagues, even those who said he has a valid point but raised it at the wrong time.
“There may be some point and time when I’d use the same device, but tonight wasn’t the night because there was no way you were going to produce an outcome, and actually, an outcome that I agree with. But it wasn’t the night,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. “We needed to fund the government and move on.”
Paul went back and forth with a number of his colleagues on the Senate floor throughout the night, including Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who made a unanimous consent request while Paul was in the cloakroom, forcing a staffer to hurry to retrieve the Kentucky Republican so he could formally object.
While Paul said throughout the night that he didn’t want to shut the government down, it was cemented when the Senate was called into recess during the 11 p.m. hour until 12:01 a.m.
“He wasted a lot of people’s time,” said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.
“I understand what he’s saying, and a lot of stuff he’s saying is true. But at the same time, he’s tilting at windmills,” Shelby adding, noting the old idiom from the novel Don Quixote.
By the end of the night, an exasperated Senate had it’s fill of Paul for the evening that spilled into the early morning.
“Are we done?” Graham chimed into the Senate clerk’s mic on the floor as the vote finished.
