Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) slammed Democrats last week for shutting down the federal government over a list of demands, including the return of millions of dollars in wasteful spending programs for foreign countries.
During a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate last week, Kennedy said that you would “need an Excel spreadsheet to be able to follow” the demands of the Democrat leaders in Congress. “You’d stack them here. You could stand of them and paint the ceiling,” Kennedy added. “And that’s not much of an exaggeration.”
The Louisiana senator claimed that even Democrat senators understand their demands for ending the government shutdown are “unreasonable.”
“That’s why I say the policy part of this makes absolutely no sense,” Kennedy said. “And that’s because this isn’t about policy. This shutdown is about politics.”
In another video, Kennedy suggested that Democrats are forcing the government to remain shut down until millions of dollars in wasteful foreign spending projects are restored to the U.S. government’s budget.
“Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez got very, very upset, as did the socialist wing of the party, when the president sent over what’s called a rescission package. Basically, President Trump just said we want you to take some stuff out of the budget that we think is wasteful, and we did,” Kennedy stated. “And that upset the congresswoman. She’s entitled to be upset if she wants to, but that really upset the socialist wing of the party. And so we took out, and here’s what they want us to put back in.”
READ MORE: Military services closed, limited at US bases in Europe as gov’t shutdown continues
Kennedy explained that the programs Republicans removed from the budget, which Democrats are demanding be added back to the budget, include $3.6 million for “pastry cooking classes and dance focus groups for male prostitutes in Haiti,” $4.2 million for various LGBTQ projects in Uganda and the Balkans, over $833,000 for transgender individuals in Nepal, $300,000 to sponsor a pride parade in Lesotho, $3 million for circumcision and sterilization procedures in Zambia, $6 million in subsidies for Palestinian media outlets, almost $882,000 for social media and mentorship programs in Serbia, and $500,000 for the purchase of electric buses in Rwanda.
“We took it out, the congresswoman and the socialist wing of their party says we’ve got to put that back in for that open government,” Kennedy said.
“That’s what this fight is all about. We’re in the process of negotiating a budget with our Democratic friends. We ran out of time. The cutoff was midnight Tuesday night. That’s when the clock struck midnight, and the budget ran out,” Kennedy added. “What we had asked for and what we’re still asking for is to let’s continue to negotiate. We — meaning the Republicans and the Democrats — for six more weeks and try to agree on a budget. That’s all we’re asking.”
