Republicans engage in the same ineffective political stunts every single December. But Rand Paul, seriously? Cut it out.
It’s an American holiday tradition for the U.S. Congress to pass a trillion dollar-plus spending bill that is thousands of pages long. It's a gift to look forward to every Christmas season. This year, Democrats and Republicans have unwrapped a $1.7 trillion behemoth that is 4,155 pages long. Like clockwork, some Republicans are out there pretending like they are actively fighting the omnibus. It’s the same old dog-and-pony show and it's embarrassing. I can offer President Trump himself as a prime example of Republican frailty. After signing a $1.3 trillion omnibus in 2018, President Trump declared: "I will never sign another bill like this again. I’m not going to do it again. Nobody read it. It’s only hours old." Donald Trump proceeded to do it again in 2019 and in 2020. Each December, certain Republicans go even further than just issuing some hackneyed one-liner about the national debt. Some come out and make a cringe-worthy pantomime listing the various ills of the omnibus. Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Rand Paul are the primary offenders of this sort of disgraceful and pathetic political performance art.
Ted Cruz, who is Cuban-American (né Rafael Edward Cruz), posted a video back in 2019 smoking a Cuban cigar in front of a table that had a giant stack of papers that comprised the $1.4 trillion, 2,313 page 2019 omnibus bill. Cruz acted like a wise and sophisticated gentleman while criticizing all of the superfluous items included in the legislation, which included several left-leaning initiatives. On first glance, one would think that Cruz was taking a brave stance and perhaps convincing his peers to stop passing giant spending bills. He actually was not doing any of the sort. It was just performance art. Things have only gotten much worse since Mr. Cuba's cigar video. My question to Ted Cruz is this: why does the exact same thing happen every year? Maybe it’s because the very same Ted Cruz voted in favor of $40 billion to the Ukraine this year. Maybe it's because the same guy voted in favor of the CARES act back in 2020, a $2 trillion package to "fight" the coronavirus.
Fast forward to 2022. and Rand Paul posted a 4-minute video of himself performing a very corny rendition of "Twas the Night Before Christmas," changing up some of the words to refer to the Omnibus bill. I don't understand why he thought it was a good idea to put that out. Besides being awkward and very unfunny, it wasn't even clever. Moreover, it wasn't well-delivered and it was way too long. Shorten it next time, Mr. Senator. But he didn't stop there. Paul also managed to go on television with some of his Republican friends to "criticize" the bill. Paul smugly stood at a podium next to a table that had the giant omnibus bill on it. Senator Paul rebuked (cue my eyeballs rolling) the “abomination” released in the “dead of the night” that is the 2022 Omnibus bill. Those are some strong words for an ineffectual PR stunt. Strategically placed on the table were warning signs that read things such as: “Danger: $1.7 trillion of hazardous material, Greatest threat to our national security $1.7 trillion added to the debt," and more. I don’t know if Rand was trying to be hip or cool with his set-up but I will say that it was neither. He was recently re-elected to office, so I don't understand why he's trying so hard.
Even though I'm sure he would do reasonably well in a Broadway musical, I don't care for Rand Paul's "talents" in the theater arts. I also do not care to watch Ted Cruz pretend to be James Bond. What are these clowns actually doing for the American public? This omnibus is more expensive and it’s almost twice as long as the one that Cruz criticized back in 2019. Way back in 2010, the conservative publication National Review posted an article online titled “One Last Disgrace” complaining about the $1.1 trillion, 1,924 page omnibus bill for that year. Sound familiar? Ted Cruz even tweeted about it back then. In fact, Cruz has been tweeting about the omnibus bill almost ever year but nothing ever changes. Rand Paul has also been tweeting about the omnibus bill every year since 2017. But it only gets worse. Something's not adding up.
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