On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow,” House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) urged the Senate to avoid passing an omnibus bill funding the government for the next year and pointed out that Republicans were able to lift the ban on oil exports under the Obama administration and lift the military vaccine mandate by using the funding leverage that would be eliminated with an omnibus.
McCarthy stated, “They’re going to take away our opportunity to secure the border, to become energy-independent. Because when those [appropriations] bills get passed, remember what’s happening here, Leahy and Shelby are writing it, two Senators who won’t be there in 15 days. We now have a stronger hand we can play with the Senate and with the administration because we will have the gavel. Do a short-term CR, put it into the end of January, into February. We’re willing to go forward. Larry, one of the best things we were able to do in the country was when it was divided, to lift the ban on selling our oil and gas outside of America. And you know when we did that? We did that in [the] appropriation process when Obama was president, able to negotiate. We can do that same thing now.”
McCarthy also pointed to the repeal of the military’s vaccine mandate in the National Defense Authorization Act as an example of what Republicans can do when they have leverage and use it.
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