Senator Lankford Opposes $1.3 Trillion Omnibus Spending Bill

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) tonight voted against the $1.3 trillion Fiscal Year 2018 omnibus spending bill and made the following statement:

“This omnibus bill is another symptom of Washington’s spending illness; massive overspending in a 2,200 page bill released only hours before the vote. Our Fiscal Year ended September 30, 2017, almost six months ago, but the yearly appropriations were completed today. Since 1986, there have been 23 omnibus bills in all – our budget process has only worked correctly four times since 1974. This is no way to govern.

“Congress has passed an omnibus bill that is $1.3 trillion in hard-earned taxpayer dollars, as our deficit approaches $1 trillion this year and the overall national debt has already topped $21 trillion. I could not support this massive bill nor the broken budget process that brought us this bill. No one has read the bill nor evaluated the long-term consequences of expanding our deficit another $300 billion. I’m grateful to serve on the new Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform to finally develop a new process for our annual federal budget. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we can’t keep running up our deficit and debt.”

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