Exclusive — Rep. Paul Gosar: ‘This Two-Year Budget Is a Huge Albatross’

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, told Breitbart News Tonight on Tuesday that “this two-year budget is a huge albatross,” arguing that the budget sets the stage for even more troublesome spending bills.

Host Joel Pollak asked Rep. Gosar if Republicans will have more trouble trying to cut spending and pass some of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, such as funding and building a southern border wall, in the September spending bill.

Gosar told Pollak, “This is becoming even more problematic for the fall. You’re going to shut down the government in the fall right before a general election? Our leverage was here right at the beginning. It was right when Chuck Schumer started seeing his numbers slip with the ‘Schumer Shutdown.’ We in the Freedom Caucus said that we need to divest the defense spending from discretionary spending. Now we may dislike what the House has done, but at least they did a budget with 12 appropriations bills. It was the first time in my eight years [in Congress] that we actually started penciling in where the money goes.”

The Arizona conservative argued that Congress should have focused on passing a budget through regular order, which means passing 12 separate appropriations bills. Gosar added that this process would put the onus on the Senate to pass their appropriations bills.

“If the Senate did not do their job and pass their appropriations bills for the discretionary spending, BCA [the Budget Control Act] comes in and cuts, and they’re responsible for it. End of story. So it rewards good behavior and not bad behavior,” Gosar explained.

Now that Congress passed the omnibus spending bill in Congress, the legislative branch will have to pass another spending bill in September to avert a government shutdown. Gosar warned that future spending bills may be as bad or worse than the March omnibus.

Congressman Gosar warned, “This two-year budget is a huge albatross because it gives the Senate a huge path towards another year of spending without having to do their appropriations bills. They intend not to do that because of the spending levels.”

“There’s some real bad things in this bill that are going to go back to haunt us,” Gosar told Breitbart News Tonight. “That’s the Waters of the U.S. and the Ozone rule. I think the administration and particularly the leadership really underestimated how bad this is.”

As Breitbart News reported, the omnibus spending bill contains language that explicitly bars funding for a southern border wall. 

The omnibus also has the Fix NICS Act, which would allow unelected bureaucrats to remove Americans’ right to purchase firearms without due process.

Furthermore, the omnibus spending bill includes funding for the New York Gateway Bridge project that will benefit Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

The House Freedom Caucus came out against the omnibus on March 21, calling the legislation an “insult to American taxpayers.”

Gosar argued that even Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), a member of Senate Republican leadership, said, “This process doesn’t work.”

The Freedom Caucus member suggested that the omnibus spending bill was designed in such a complex manner that by simply reading the bill itself, “You don’t even get the full ramifications of the law.”