Rand Paul Hauls Out the 4,155-Page Omnibus: 'In the Dead of the Night, 1:30 in the Morning' (December 20, 2022)

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., brought the evidence with him. Standing at a Capitol news conference beside a table stacked with the printed $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill, Paul tore into the way Congress was jamming it through days before Christmas: “4,155 pages. When was it produced? In the dead of the night, 1:30 in the morning, when it was released” [1].

The news conference came on Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2022, hours after House and Senate negotiators made the bill public [2][4]. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., hosted it, and Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Mike Braun of Indiana joined Paul [2]. The video above shows Paul’s remarks. Quotes are from HYGO News’ transcription of the video, checked against reporting by The National Desk and Fox News [1][3].

”In the Dead of the Night”

Paul’s complaint started with the clock. Negotiators released the legislative text at around 1:30 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, leaving rank-and-file lawmakers and the public little time to read it before a Friday shutdown deadline, CNN reported [4]. The Senate Appropriations Committee’s announcement of the bill is dated Monday, Dec. 19 [5].

Then Paul turned to the critics. “Now, people argue that it’s conservatives’ fault. You don’t have the Christmas spirit. Somehow you’re holding up government,” he said. “Well, whose job is it to produce this? The people in charge of spending, the people in charge of both of the parties."

"You Got Nine Months, Almost 10 Months”

Paul argued that the crunch was self-inflicted. “When did they know that this would be necessary? Well, it’s in the law, September 30th,” he said, referring to the end of the federal fiscal year. “You got nine months, almost 10 months to produce a plan, to have a spending plan.”

“They weren’t ready on September 30th, so they voted themselves 90 more days. They weren’t ready last week either, so they voted themselves another week. And now we have it at 1:30 in the morning this morning.”

The paper trail backs up the sequence. On Sept. 30, 2022, Congress passed a stopgap that kept the government open through Dec. 16, about 11 weeks [11]. On Dec. 16, it passed another that ran one more week, to Dec. 23 [12].

Then came the punch line: “But what’s the clamor? The clamor is to vote. Vote now. Let’s get it done. Why are you standing in the way of spending?”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., made the opposite pitch on the Senate floor, CBS News reported: “Nobody wants a shutdown. Nobody benefits from a shutdown, and so I hope nobody here will stand in the way from funding the government ASAP” [6].

”The Process Stinks”

Paul did not hold back on the bill itself. “The process stinks. It’s an abomination. It’s a no good, rotten way to run your government. $6 trillion entity. And they want 24 hours to process this and then they want to go forward,” he said, according to Fox News [3]. “The American people don’t want this, they’re sick and tired of it, and they’re paying for this through the nose, with inflation,” he added, The National Desk reported [1].

He also posted a picture of himself behind a cart holding the 4,155 pages, asking, “I wonder how long it would take the clerk to read this…” [3].

Paul had company. “This monstrous spending bill comes to 4,155 pages. We deserve proper consideration and the chance to read, debate and amend — not a backroom deal,” Lee wrote on Twitter [6]. In the House, then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., warned that bills from GOP senators who voted for the package would be “dead on arrival in the House if this nearly $2T monstrosity is allowed to move forward over our objections and the will of the American people” [6].

But the bill had powerful Republican backing in the Senate. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Paul’s home-state colleague, acknowledged that passing an omnibus days before Christmas is “not the right way to run” the process. He urged its approval anyway, calling it “an impressive outcome for the Republican negotiators” [6].

Six Days Earlier: “This Omnibus Appropriations Bill That Nobody Has Seen”

Before the text came out, House Republican Whip Steve Scalise warned what was coming. “And, right after that election, where the American people said that they want a check and a balance on the Biden Administration, where they want to change leadership in the House, we see Washington trying to do that same business one last time, right before Christmas, by bringing this omnibus appropriations bill that nobody has seen,” Scalise said at a Dec. 14, 2022, news conference with House Republican leaders [20].

“As [Leader McCarthy] pointed out, just a handful of people – at most – are writing it right now. It’s still not even available for anyone to read,” he said [20].

“The Democrat House, the Democrat Senate, the Democrat White House, had all year to get funding taken care of by September 30th,” Scalise said. “Just look at [President] Biden’s two years. He spent about $10 trillion on things like paying people not to work, giving out checks to prisoners, [including] the Boston bomber.” [20]

What Was in the Bill

The price tag: $1.7 trillion, including $858 billion for defense and $772.5 billion for nondefense programs, according to the Senate Appropriations Committee [5].
Ukraine: $44.9 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies [5].
Disasters: $40.6 billion for communities recovering from drought, hurricanes, flooding, wildfires and other disasters [5].
Earmarks: about $15.3 billion for 7,234 member-requested projects, called “Community Project Funding” in the House and “Congressionally Directed Spending” in the Senate, according to the Government Accountability Office. The year before, it was about $9.1 billion for 4,963 projects [7].

For how the annual spending bills are supposed to move, see our explainer on the federal budget process.

By the Numbers

4,155: pages in the bill [1][6].
68-29: the Senate vote on Dec. 22, 2022. All 29 no votes came from Republicans, including Paul, Lee, Scott, Johnson and Braun. Eighteen Republicans, McConnell among them, voted yes [8].
225-201: the House vote on Dec. 23, 2022. Nine Republicans, including Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, voted yes. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York was the only Democrat to vote no, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan voted present [9].
$6.272 trillion: what the federal government spent in fiscal 2022, the year that had just ended, according to the Treasury and the White House budget office. That is the “$6 trillion entity” Paul described [14].
$31.34 trillion: total public debt outstanding on Dec. 20, 2022, the day of the news conference [15].

What Happened Next

It became law. Congress passed one more one-week stopgap on Dec. 23, running to Dec. 30 [13]. President Joe Biden signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, on Dec. 29, 2022, as Public Law 117-328 [10].
The debt limit hit. On Jan. 19, 2023, less than a month later, the Treasury began using “extraordinary measures” because the debt had reached the $31.381 trillion statutory limit, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress [17]. That set up the 2023 debt-limit standoff, including the White House’s refusal to negotiate, covered in our page on Karine Jean-Pierre’s debt-limit briefing.
Paul aired his grievances. Three days after the news conference, Paul released his annual “Festivus Report,” tallying $482,276,543,907 in what he called federal waste. He blasted “a pork-laden $1.9 trillion omnibus spending package for 2023, released in the dead of night, and voted into law without anyone having read it,” Fox News reported [16].
He kept voting no. In March 2025, Paul was the lone Republican to vote against the six-month stopgap that funded the government through September; it passed 54-46 [18]. During the government shutdown in the fall of 2025, he again voted no on the funding bill, saying his biggest issue was spending, and pushed his own plan to balance the budget in about five years [19].
The debt kept climbing. Total public debt outstanding reached $40.44 trillion on Oct. 22, 2026, according to the Treasury, more than $9 trillion above the level on the day Paul stood beside the printed omnibus [15].