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Budget 'embraces polar opposite' of conservative goals, Meadows says

By Bill Moss, Published: March 22, 2018

U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows, leader of the Freedom Caucus, ripped the $1.3 trillion budget that the House passed on Thursday, saying the spending plan "flatly rejects" promises conservative Republicans made to voters.

Here's his statement Meadows issued Thursday:

This omnibus is nowhere close to what Republicans promised to fight for. When the American people sent us to Congress, their message was loud and their mandate clear: Secure the border; Repeal and replace Obamacare; Protect Second Amendment rights from bureaucrats in Washington; Defund Planned Parenthood; Cut wasteful spending; ‘Drain the swamp’ and change the unsustainable way Washington, D.C. does business.

This budget embraces the polar opposite of these principles. We are not funding the wall. We are putting Second Amendment rights at risk. We are failing to provide families relief from Obamacare. We are still sending taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood. We are not cutting federal funds to sanctuary cities. We are growing the size of government at a break-neck pace. And we are doing all of this through a 2,300 page spending bill, written privately by four leadership members, that became public only 24 hours ago.

This is wrong. This is not the limited government conservatism our voters demand. Our constituents—our employers—deserve better.

Republicans in Congress today were faced with a choice: Vote ‘yes’ and fund the military while embracing record levels of spending with a list of unfulfilled promises; or vote no, go back to the drawing board, and get to work on a real proposal, with a real process, that funds our troops and actually fights to deliver the bill of goods that we promised the American people.

Members of the Freedom Caucus chose to vote no, because this omnibus doesn’t just forget the promises we made to voters—it flatly rejects them.