This Week in Congress Update: Republicans Go Nuclear, Democrats Bust the Budget

Yesterday, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell invoked the nuclear option to limit debate on most presidential nominations from 30 hours to two hours.

Going nuclear means Senator McConnell raised a point of order that a nomination should only be debated for two hours. The Senate parliamentarian ruled against Senator McConnell, who called for a vote challenging the ruling.

Senator McConnell’s challenge to the rules passed on a 48-51 vote. Since the vote was on upholding the ruling of the chair, a yes vote is a vote against McConnell’s position. Every Republican except Senator Mike Lee voted to change the rules and every Democrat voted no.

You can see the vote here.

The House Budget Committee was also busy yesterday, passing H.R. 2021, the “Investing for the People Act.”  (With a name like that, it has to be bad.)

The bill is a substitute for a real budget and simply raises the spending caps imposed by sequestration.

Under the bill, non-defense discretionary spending is set at $631 billion in 2021, a 5.7% increase, and $646 billion in 2022.

The bill increases “defense” spending by 2.6%.

Despite this, Republicans are saying Democrats are “underfunding” defense.  Perhaps that’s because the bill limits spending on the Overseas Contingency Operations Fund (OCO) to $59 billion for defense and $9 billion for non-defense.

Republicans have increased spending and debt to historic levels, yet that is not enough for Democrats. There is truly no party of fiscal conservatives in America, which is one reason your support of Campaign for Liberty is so important.