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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didnt go into detail but acknowledged the difficult path he took to getting the spending bill across the finish line. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

The Senate majority leader secured passage of a massive omnibus spending package after convincing Sens. Rand Paul and Jim Risch to drop their procedural objections.

By BURGESS EVERETT

03/22/2018 03:56 PM EDT

Updated 03/23/2018 01:13 AM EDT

First there were Rand Pauls objections. Then Jim Rischs. But finally at 12:39 a.m. on Friday, the Senate passed a bill funding the government through September and went home after a chaotic 12 hours of drama.

The chamber voted 65-32 to pass the $1.3 trillion spending package and send it to President Donald Trump. But it was a tricky road to avoid a government shutdown, requiring Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to privately telephone Paul and let him vent about the Senate rules, then satisfy Rischs objections to a wilderness area being named after a dead Idaho governor.

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This is ridiculous. This is juvenile, fumed Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who asked McConnell for an explanation of why the chamber was in at midnight. What has occurred over the last 11 hours that keeps us here voting on a bill that we all know is going to pass?

McConnell didnt go into detail but acknowledged the difficult path he took to getting the spending bill across the finish line.

My principal responsibility is begging, pleading and cajoling. I have been in continuous discussions, shall I say, with several of our members who were legitimately unhappy, McConnell said.

Thats putting it mildly.

Paul kept everyone in suspense that he might shut the government down again but he backed off late Thursday night after a private conversation with McConnell. The junior GOP senator from Kentucky spent the day refusing to rule out forcing another brief government shutdown in opposition to a return to Obama spending and trillion-dollar deficits.

But after a call with McConnell around 10 p.m., Paul said he would let the bill go through, a show of pragmatism that was not on display last month when Paul caused an hours-long lapse in government funding.

"It's never really been about how long we stay here. But it is to a certain extent, when you lose, trying to draw attention to your cause," Paul told reporters as the clock neared midnight. "We look for victories any way we can, knowing that we don't have the votes to win."

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Paul said he pressed McConnell on allowing more amendments and debate in the Senate, as the spending bill was written by congressional leaders in private. Paul said he had got some sort of "commitment" to open things up but was vague on what McConnell had promised.

"There are never any amendments on anything, and it's very closed process. The bills are developed behind closed doors with very little input from rank and file. So I think I got that message across," Paul said. "I hope it will be better."

But once Paul was taken care of, the ornery Risch was next. The Idaho Republican protested moving forward on the bill because it renamed an Idaho park after Cecil D. Andrus, a former Democratic governor and sometime political foe, who died last year, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Risch was under the impression that the renaming would not be in the bill, according to a GOP senator. But Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) helped direct the renaming of the White Clouds Wilderness in the omnibus, and Risch was furious to read the bill and find it in there. McConnell and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) met with Risch privately about the matter to try to calm him.

The Senate approved a technical change to the bill striking the renaming, but Simpson is insisting the provision stay in the bill, senators said. Risch refused to speak about it.

I dont have any comment, he told reporters.

Still, Risch's complaints were overshadowed most of Thursday by Paul, whom fellow senators were trying desperately to persuade to not cause another shutdown.

Paul was noncommittal on Thursday as he walked into a Republican Caucus lunch. He said he had more than 2,000 pages of the 2,200-page bill left to get through before he would decide how to proceed. A few hours later, he tweeted that he was on page 207 of the monstrous bill and began singling out pieces of the bill for criticism, stopping at 600 pages before going on Fox News at 8:30 p.m., where he continued to trash the bill and play coy about his intentions.

Republicans had hoped that they could produce the spending deal much earlier this week to evade Paul's procedural protests and give the Senate time to pass the bill without the possibility of a shutdown.

But top congressional leaders released the bill at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, infuriating Paul and other conservatives who say that did not leave nearly enough time to review the legislation.

The will-he-or-wont-he cause a momentary shutdown was a familiar play from Paul. He loves using Senate rules to draw attention to his causes even if it means agitating the people he goes to work with everyday. He has filibustered nominees, briefly caused a surveillance program to lapse and, in February, refused to give GOP leaders consent to vote on a funding bill before the funding deadline, causing a brief shutdown.

There was no concerted effort at the Republican lunch Thursday to persuade Paul to back down, attendees said. But GOP leaders and individual senators tried to prevail on Paul to play nice.

Its fair to say that its fine to make a statement, said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), who dislikes the spending increases in the bill but was eager to vote on it. Theres no benefit to waiting at this point. We should go ahead and get it done.

And the massive bills late unveiling contributed to the impasse with Risch, who was surprised to find Andrus' name in the spending bill.

Senators werent even quite sure if Risch was satisfied or what had been done to accommodate him. A source familiar with the matter said the renaming of the wilderness area after Andrus is unlikely to become law unless the House approves a technical change.

Both Risch and Paul were empowered by Senate rules, which required all 100 senators to agree hold a vote before the Friday night shutdown deadline. The House cleared the massive spending measure on Thursday.

The must-pass nature of the spending bill also contributed to the late-night fights.

This is a ridiculous process that we go through where people extort us until we get so tired that were willing to do whatever it is they wish for us to do, Corker said.

Beyond simply annoying other senators, the protests threatened to disrupt trips some of them are planning to take overseas as part of congressional delegations. There were multiple so-called CODELs scheduled to leave on Thursday night, and they made contingency plans as it became clear Thursday would be a late night, according to a Republican senator.

But GOP leaders believed all along that the looming recess and the certainty that the bill will pass, just a matter of when would be enough to get Paul not to gum up the works again and keep the Senate from a third shutdown this year. It took a a few painful hours to get there, but they ended up being right.

There are some unhappy folks, understandably. And they should be, the way this stuff gets done, said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). But in the end you realize weve got to fund the government and its kind of an inevitability.

Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.

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Rand Paul, king of Senate drama, is at it again - politico.com

The two-year budget deal that brought a brief government shutdown to an end on Friday balloons the deficit by allowing large increases in defense spending and disaster relief programs. The deal was held up in the Senate by Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who objected to the hikes in defense spending and its effects on the deficit. Paul delayed a vote in the Senate by holding forth on the floor until his time expired.

Paul joined us to discuss the budget deal, military spending and what he calls Republicans' "hypocrisy" on government spending.

The following is a transcript of the interview with Paul that aired Sunday, Feb. 11, 2018, on "Face the Nation."

MAJOR GARRETT: We go now to Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul whose objection to this week's funding agreement touched off an ever so brief government shutdown. Senator Paul joins us from Palm Beach Florida. Senator, what did you accomplish?

SENATOR RAND PAUL: Well you know I think we should draw attention to the fact that we're spending so much money. I ran for office in 2010 with what was called sort of the Tea Party tidal wave. At that point we were very, very critical of President Obama's deficits you know approaching a trillion dollars in a year. We talked endlessly about them we had 100,000 people rally on the Mall in Washington. And I'm still against deficit spending just because Republicans are doing it doesn't make it any better.

MAJOR GARRETT: And now we have deficits projected to be a trillion dollars again and yet they're growing non-recessionary economy or are you troubled by that?

SENATOR RAND PAUL: Yeah, I'm very worried and I think one of the questions the Republicans I think are not willing to ask themselves is can you be fiscally conservative and be for unlimited military spending. There's sort of this question, "Is the military budget too small or maybe is our mission too large around the world?" And because Republicans are unwilling to confront that they want more, more, more for military spending. And so to get that they have to give the Democrats what they want which is more and more and more for domestic spending and the compromise while some are happy with bipartisanship. Well if the bipartisanship is exploding the deficit I'm not so sure that's the kind of bipartisanship we need.

MAJOR GARRETT: From your point of view, Senator, on the defense side of the equation is the spending and the mission, are they reckless?

SENATOR RAND PAUL: I think the mission is- is beyond what we need to be we're actively in war in about seven countries. And yet the Congress hasn't voted on declaring or authorizing the use of military force in over 15 years now. So I've been one that's been bugging the Senate and Congress to say how can we be at war without ever voting on it don't the American people through their representatives get a chance to say when we go to war. I think the Afghan war is long past its mission. I think we killed and captured and disrupted the people who attacked us on 9/11 long ago. And I think now it's a nation building exercise. We're spending 50 billion dollars a year. And if the president really is serious about infrastructure, a lot of that money could be spent at home. Instead of building bridges and schools and roads in Afghanistan or in Pakistan. I think we could do that at home and the interesting thing is I think the president's instincts lean that way but --

(CROSSTALK)

MAJOR GARRETT: His policies, his policies, have not though.

SENATOR RAND PAUL: And that's sort of the problem and this is something that we've seen even going back to Reagan conservatives said, "Oh, we love Reagan." Then the people appointed around him were often big government types. That's a little bit of the problem I see here is that I think Donald Trump is probably the least interventionist minded president we've had in a long time. I mean he criticized George Bush for the intervention in the Iraq war. I think he's not that excited about continuing the Afghan war forever. But the generals who surrounded him with don't want to admit that there isn't a military solution. And so the war goes on and on and on. And really I think after 15 years and a trillion dollars that the Afghan it's time for them to take over their country.

MAJOR GARRETT: Senator Paul you and I have talked about this many times you know the instincts in Washington are to spend. You know that's what's going to happen and yet you voted for the tax cut which is contributing to these deficit and debt problems. How do you reconcile those two facts?

SENATOR RAND PAUL: I think if you're for tax cuts and for increasing spending that's hypocritical. But if you're for tax cuts and you're also for cutting spending a corresponding amount. See I would offset the tax cuts with spending cuts and there are a few of us that would actually do that. When we had the budget deal that lowered the taxes I also had an amendment to look at and try to control entitlement spending at the same time to pay for the tax cuts. But interestingly I could only interest three other Republicans. We had four votes total to try to control entitlement spending and that is where the money is.

MAJOR GARRETT: And that's sort of the way, Senator, because you know where the votes are. You know the votes are there for tax cuts. You know they're not there for spending cuts. So, isn't there any part of your voting pattern that is irresponsible?

SENATOR RAND PAUL: I don't think so because you know I can only control how I vote. So I voted for the tax cuts and I voted for spending cuts. The people who voted for tax cuts and spending increases. I think there is some hypocrisy there and it shows they're not serious about the debt. But all throughout my career I've always voted for spending cuts and I'm happy to offset cuts in taxes with cuts in spending. So no I think that I've had a consistent position in being very concerned about the debt and I want to shrink the size of government. So, the reason I'm for tax cuts is I to return more of the money to the people who own that who- who actually deserve to have their money returned to them. But it also shrinks the size of government by cutting taxes or should if you cut spending at the same time.

MAJOR GARRETT: Senator Paul I don't need to tell you this was a rough week in terms of White House personnel. Do you think the president was well served this past week by his chief of staff John Kelly?

SENATOR RAND PAUL: You know I don't know the ins and outs of who hires and fires and who goes through personnel files, but you know all I can say is from looking from the outside in and not really knowing all the facts that obviously domestic violence should be roundly condemned particularly in an advanced world like ours that just something that we shouldn't countenance.

MAJOR GARRETT: Is that a message you think this White House has communicated clearly?

SENATOR RAND PAUL: You know I don't know. I just don't know the ins and outs and I was kind of distracted for about you know 24 hours of that news cycle you know talking for long periods of time about the deficit. And so-- and it's hard for me and I know the media gets consumed with this, you know. But it is sort of a personnel thing that those of us on the outside don't know the ins and outs and I nobody wants to speculate on it.

MAJOR GARRETT: Sure.

SENATOR RAND PAUL: But I think really that we should all roundly condemn domestic violence and--

MAJOR GARRETT: Well, look--

(CROSSTALK)

SENATOR RAND PAUL: -- complicated matters that really they have to deal with because they know all the facts and we don't.

MAJOR GARRETT: Sure. But setting aside the ins and outs. The president said on Twitter due process, lives are being ruined. The vice president said no tolerance. Can you reconcile those two. And if somebody in Kentucky asked you, "Senator, what's their position on this?" Could you explain it to them?

SENATOR RAND PAUL: Right.You know it's difficult for me to get involved and there's other than to say that absolutely no place for domestic violence in our world. And then beyond that I will say that there is complicated things and somebody has to. I mean if you've ever been to family court with he said and she said and I'm not saying that I'm denying what these women are saying. I'm just saying that these things are very, very complicated. You go to family court and you're a family court judge you talk about a very, very difficult job. But that being said I don't want to think-- I don't want anybody to believe I'm making excuses. There is no excuse for domestic violence.

MAJOR GARRETT: Senator Paul, thank you so much for joining us this Sunday. And we'll be back in one minute with the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff. Please, stay with us.

Read more:
Transcript: Sen. Rand Paul on "Face the Nation," Feb. 11 ...

Sen. Rand PaulRandal (Rand) Howard PaulSenate approves .3 trillion spending bill, sending to Trump GOP senator threatened to hold up bill over provision to honor late political rival: report Conservatives balk over funding bill ahead of shutdown MORE (R-Ky.) on Sunday vowed to do whatever it takes to block President TrumpDonald John TrumpPoll: Both parties need to do more on drug prices Senate approves .3 trillion spending bill, sending to Trump White House: Trump will delay steel tariffs for EU, six countries MOREs picksfor secretary of State and CIA director.

I dont think you really want people who are eager for war to be running the State Department. You want a diplomat, Paul said on CNNs State of the Union, explaining why he opposes the nomination of Mike PompeoMichael (Mike) Richard PompeoDemocrats lay into Trump's pick of Bolton for national security adviser Dem senator on Bolton hire: Trump is 'lining up his war cabinet' Trump replaces McMaster with Bolton as national security adviser MORE.

I frankly think that Pompeos positions are too much of an advocate for regime change, really everywhere, he said. I dont think our policy ought to be for regime change, so I think Pompeo really isnt a good fit to be a diplomat, he added.

Paul has said he will oppose both nominations. In Haspel's case, Paul opposes her appointment due to her involvement in the enhanced interrogation program during the George W. Bush administration.

Paul said during a separate interview on CBS's "Face the Nation" that there is no evidence [Haspel] was protesting against torture, and theres every evidence she was covering it up.

He added that the U.S. should set an example for the world, and should not have someone who condoned torture leading the CIA.

Paul onCNN vowed to do whatever it takes to stop Pompeos and Haspels nominations, including launching a filibuster. He said hes hopeful his actions will send a message to the American people, who will in turn oppose the nominations.

Paul's defection could force Republicans to rely on Vice President Pence, or Democrats, to getPompeo through the full Senate. Assuming every Republican senator but Paul supports Pompeo, as they did for his current CIA post, and every Democrat opposes, the Senate would be split 50-50.

In Haspel's case, no Democrats have formally said they will oppose her, but several have raised concerns about her involvement in the interrogation program.

This report was updated at 11:03 a.m.

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Rand Paul: People 'eager for war' shouldn't be running State ...

Republican Senator Rand Paul said Sunday he would do everything to stop President Donald Trumps nominations of Mike Pompeo for secretary of State and Gina Haspel for CIA director, but conceded he may not be able to stop them.

Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said on CBS News Face the Nation that he wants someone whos not advocating for war, particularly against Iran and North Korea, rather than Pompeo,the current CIA director.

Trump named Pompeo, a former Republican representative from Kansas, to replace Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The president fired Tillerson on March 13 in a Twitter message.

Paul also objected to Haspels overseeing of CIA black sites where waterboarding occurred in the early 2000s. I dont think torture is what Americas about, Paul said in one of three appearances on Sunday talk shows.

The Senator also spoke out against Haspel in an editorial published by Politico on Sunday. Some details may be disputed, but it remains true that Haspel ran a secret center in Thailand where prisoners were tortured, he wrote. There is no question that during her career, Haspel participated in and and helped develop the program that our own government has labeled torture.

On CBS he conceded that that he doesnt have the power to stop her nomination if she gets enough votes.

Also on CNN, fellow Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said that Pauls opposition makes him an outlier within the Republican Party.

Pompeo and Haspel are both qualified and should be confirmed, Graham said.

Still, Haspel, 61, whos currently Deputy Director of the CIA, will need to acknowledge that waterboarding is no longer allowed by federal law, Graham said.

With assistance by Mark Niquette

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Rand Paul Issues Filibuster Threat on Trumps State and CIA ...

In his first Sunday show appearance since he was injured in analtercation with his neighborat his home in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Republican Sen. Rand Paul said he was in "living hell" due to broken ribs and other serious complications. Paul told John Dickerson that he couldn't get out of bed without help for weeks following the incident in November.

Paul discussed the altercation and weighed in on several hot-button issues in Washington, including President Trump's fitness for office and the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.

The following is a transcript of the interview with Paul that aired Sunday, Jan. 7, 2018, on "Face the Nation."

JOHN DICKERSON: And we're back with Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul. It's good to have you back, senator. We hope you've fully recovered and, by the way, happy birthday, as well.

RAND PAUL: Thank you, thank you. I was wondering if I'd get any presents today, but I understand that the ethics rules of the Senate won't let me take any presents, but thanks for having me on.

JOHN DICKERSON: That's all right. Well, your presence is our present. Thank you. How are you feeling by the way?

RAND PAUL: A little bit better each day. It was sort of I guess a living hell for the first four or five weeks. Couldn't get out of bed without assistance, six broken ribs, damage to my lungs, two bouts of pneumonia. It was really a tough go of it. But each day I feel a little bit better. This last month I've been doing better.

JOHN DICKERSON: You haven't talked about the motivation for this, but there is an increase. In politics today, things have gotten a little bit uglier. Was that a part of what happened here, and do you talk about that with your colleagues?

RAND PAUL: My colleagues come up all the time, and they want to make sure that there is some kind of deterrent because people don't want to think that it's open season on our elected officials. I was also at the baseball field when we were shot at with semi-automatic fire, and Steve Scalise was severely wounded, and I was ten feet from a young staffer who was shot in the leg.

So yeah, I've been involved in violent attacks twice in the last year. And so, we're very aware of it. And I think one of the things about motivations is people got obsessed, some in the media, about the motivations. But I think really we usually don't ask if someone's raped or mugged or whatever why the person did it. We want punishment and deterrents. And I guess that's what I'm mostly about. I just don't think of any kind of motivation or justification, whether it's political or personal, to attack someone who's unaware from behind in their own yard.

JOHN DICKERSON: Sure. Although, if it's politically motivated, those who are involved in politics might think about changing the way they behave to change that climate.

RAND PAUL: Maybe, maybe.

JOHN DICKERSON: Let me ask you about the climate here in Washington. This new book about the White House, a lot of debate about it. As a politician, the president has responded by talking about his mental stability. Why do you suppose he did that when, instead, he could say: "Forget this book. We've passed tax cuts, we're defeating ISIS, we've nominated a bunch of judges." Why do you think he did that?

RAND PAUL: You know, I don't know. I guess my first response was this was sort of a gossipy book, kind of like a Kitty Kelley book back from when I was in high school. I remember her books would come out and nobody really believed them. They were treated as like a sitcom or treated as a television show.

They weren't really treated seriously by the media. I do think, from my experience, when I look at the president, I've been around the president quite a bit, I've been in the White House quite a bit with him. I can give you one example that I think really shows his great insight and ability to cut through to the chase and do things that ordinary politicians don't do.

And that's when I took him the idea of letting individuals join together to buy insurance across state lines. Every politician, Republican and bureaucrat in Washington, said we couldn't do it, and they hadn't done it in 30 years. He looked at the original law, he told his lawyers, "Look at the original law and see if the interpretation of these previous government attorneys have been correct."

And he had the wherewithal just to say: "No. We're going to let individuals join these groups so they can get cheaper insurance and perhaps better insurance as well and perhaps get insurance for people who don't have insurance." But he did that because he's different than any other politician.

And now we have all these wiseacres out there wanting to criticize and be presumptuous about trying to judge someone's intelligence. I can tell you, he's got the wherewithal to do things that no politician's been able to do and in a good way.

JOHN DICKERSON: Let me ask you a couple of policy questions. We talked about section 702 of the FISA with the C.I.A. director. You have held up a nomination of John Demers, and you're also talking about filibustering this. Why?

RAND PAUL: 702 is supposed to get information on foreigners. And so, we have a lower than constitutional standard. We say, "Well, the constitution doesn't apply to people in other countries." And I agree with that. So, we collect a massive amount of information on foreigners.

But they talk to Americans. So, after you gather millions and billions of bits of information, it turns out there's a lot of Americans in the database. What we don't want to happen is that domestic law enforcement, police and F.B.I. are looking in a database that was collected without constitutional protections.

And let's say they decide to prosecute medical marijuana people in Colorado, which is legal in Colorado, but now the federal government's talking about changing their policy and going after them, what if they're searching a database that was collected on foreigners to get incidental information on medical marijuana in Colorado? I have a real problem with that. So, they should have to get a warrant before they look at that. And really, none of that information should be used for domestic crime, because it was gathered with a less than constitutional standard.

JOHN DICKERSON: So, you have a problem with it. What are you going to do?

RAND PAUL: Well, we'll try to stop them. The people on the other side, the C.I.A. director and others, they want permanent reauthorization, no reform. And when you ask them, "Are you using this for domestic crime?" They kind of say, "Well, we don't do it very often." But they won't tell you where they're sort of looking at the information and then not presenting it in court but using that information to develop what's called parallel construction to develop cases.

They want just permanent reauthorization, which to me means no more oversight by Congress. The reason we need more oversight is that people, as Madison said, "Men are not angels." And we've seen recently how we've had some people in the F.B.I. that had bias against the president.

We also have seen now people in the Department of Justice who were married to people that were doing opposition research on Trump. So, you can see how people are human and bias could enter into this. And the history of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. are not without blemish.

The Hoover years are a great tarnish. We also had civil rights activists in '60s illegally spied upon. We had Vietnam protesters illegally spied upon. And we had this great to-do, the Church commission, back in the '70s, and FISA was supposed to reign that in.

But now many of us, Senator Wyatt and I have in a bipartisan way looked at this and said, "My goodness, we have to defend the American's right to privacy." And right now, we've sort of a minority in the Senate. In the House, though, it's close to 50/50.

JOHN DICKERSON: All right Senator, we're going to have to leave it there. Thanks so much and happy birthday again.

RAND PAUL: Thank you.

JOHN DICKERSON: And we'll be back in a moment.

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Transcript: Sen. Rand Paul on "Face the Nation," Jan. 7, 2018