http://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/us/po ... -vote.htmlSenate Passes Budget Bill to Raise Spending and Reopen Government
WASHINGTON — The Senate easily approved a far-reaching budget deal that would reopen the federal government and boost spending by hundreds of billions of dollars early Friday, but only after enduring a one-man blockade by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who had held up the vote and forced the government to close.
The House is expected to follow before daybreak, though the outcome in that chamber was less certain. If the House approves the deal, the government will reopen before the workday begins.
But Mr. Paul, a Republican, will have made his point. Angered at the huge spending increases at the center of the deal, he delayed passage for hours with a demand to vote on an amendment that would keep in place strict caps on spending that the deal would raise.
“The reason I’m here tonight is to put people on the spot,” Mr. Paul said Thursday night. “I want people to feel uncomfortable. I want them to have to answer people at home who said, ‘How come you were against President Obama’s deficits and then how come you’re for Republican deficits?’”
The shutdown comes on the heels of a three-day closure brought about by Senate Democrats last month. As midnight approached, Mr. Paul did not relent, bemoaning from the Senate floor what he saw as out-of-control government spending and repeatedly rebuffing attempts by his fellow senators to move ahead with a vote.
“I think the country’s worth a debate until 3 in the morning, frankly,” he said.
Senate leaders were left helpless.
“I think it’s irresponsible,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, lamenting what he described as “the act of a single senator who just is trying to make a point but doesn’t really care too much about who he inconveniences.”
Mr. Paul’s ideological opponents were not buying his fiscal rectitude either. Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, posted on Twitter: “Rand Paul voted for a tax bill that blew a $1.5 trillion hole in the budget. Now he is shutting the government down for three hours because of the debt. The chance to demonstrate fiscal discipline was on the tax vote. Delaying a vote isn’t a profile in courage, it’s a cleanup.”
Around 1:45 a.m., the Senate finally passed the measure, 71 to 28.
This not the first time the Junior Senator From Kentucky has blocked a Unanimous Consent motion purely for the purpose of being a dick, far from it...
Two other fairly recent examples I can think of is his blocking a Senate resolution welcoming Macedonia into NATO (a vote which had absolutely no practical effect on Macedonia's NATO membership) and his petty and mean-spirited vote to stop the Senate from moving to consider the Defense Authorization Bill immediately after the attempt to repeal Obamacare failed...(the Senate leadership in both parties supported that vote in order to allow Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain to floor manage the vote before he had to return to to Arizona to begin brain cancer treatment)
