The House of Representatives voted 225 to 201 to pass the $1.85 trillion omnibus spending bill on Friday afternoon.
This comes a day after the Senate voted 68-29 for the legislation, meaning that the bill will end up on President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature.
Nine Republicans voted in favor of the omnibus bill and one Democrat, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., voted “no.”
The Republicans who voted in favor were Reps. John Katko, R-N.Y.; Chris Jacobs, R-N.Y.; Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa.; Fred Upton, R-Mich.; Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.; Rodney Davis, R-Ill.; Steve Womack, R-Ark.; Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash.; and Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.
Heritage Foundation policy analysts have criticized the omnibus spending bill as a “vast collection of special-interest handouts and fuel for the fires of inflation and the woke, leftist establishment” and warned that it “will stifle our economy and accelerate the dissolution of the fabric of our civil society for many years to come.” (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
It was also unprecedented in recent history that an outgoing Congress passed such a large spending bill. Since 1994, the House majority has changed four times. In each case, the outgoing majority didn’t pass an omnibus appropriations bill during the lame-duck session following the election. Instead, the outgoing majority left the hard work of legislating to the representatives the American people had just elected.
Critics note that the omnibus spending package contains 6,825 pages: 4,155 pages of legislative text plus 2,670 pages of explanatory materials to instruct agencies on how to carry out the provisions. It also includes at least 4,000 earmarks to pay for the pet projects of senators and representatives.
“With this vote, these Republican senators have committed a stunning act of betrayal of their constituents and the American people,” Richard Stern, a senior policy analyst for budget policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal Thursday about the Senate vote. “With less than two weeks until the new Congress, they have shamefully voted to deny the incoming conservative House majority the use of its power of the purse to rein in Biden and his cronies.”
“This omnibus will add to inflationary pressures, saddling the nation with at least another $20,000 per household in needless debt and will expand the power of the woke Left,” Stern added.
In a lengthy speech House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., spoke about why he was voting against the omnibus bill.
“This is a monstrosity. That is one of the most shameful acts I’ve ever seen in his body,” McCarthy said on the House floor. “The appropriations process has failed the American public, and there’s no greater example of the nail in the coffin of the greatest failure of a one-party rule of the House, the Senate and the presidency.”
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who has been highly critical of the omnibus bill and the process that has led to its passage, noted that there were 226 proxy votes cast for the bill and said that the House lacked a physical quorum as required by the constitution.
“Everything the American people is watching right now is a complete sham, it’s a fraud … the American people deserve us to be here over Christmas actually fighting for them,” Roy said.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated. Katrina Trinko and Tyler O’Neil contributed to this report.
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