Press Releases

U.S. Congressman Rick Allen (R-Ga.-12) released the following statement following the House of Representative’s vote on H.R. 1625, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018, also known as the omnibus package to fund the remainder of Fiscal Year 2018.

"Today, Congress brought the 2018 omnibus bill to the House floor—a 2,200 plus page bill that was released at 8:30 p.m. last night. Spending $1.3 trillion in taxpayer dollars, saddling future generations with more debt and only giving us 16 hours to view this bill is not the way to run this country. Unfortunately, I could not, in good conscience, support this legislation.

The House did its work last year. We debated, amended, and passed all twelve government funding bills in the light of day. We put time and energy into the process to responsibly scrutinize every dollar being spent. We even passed increased defense spending in the House four times – and each time it was stalled in the Senate. The Senate took no action on these bills, made no attempt to take up their own funding bills and because of their inaction, today we find ourselves once again forced to take a vote on a bill that has not been properly vetted by the American people.

We kicked the can down the road with back-to-back-to-back Continuing Resolutions to allow time to work through the process, and yet this was the end result. Leadership in both houses in Congress must come together to find a long-term budgetary solution to our broken budget process and our crippling debt. I will continue to work with my colleagues to achieve this goal as soon as possible. American taxpayers deserve better.”

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