Roll Call - Rand Paul Goes Viral, Thanks to Mike Lee

Statement

By Niels Lesniewski

Rand Paul's late-night budget deal filibuster bid picked up an unexpected boost from fellow Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah.

Lee posted to his Facebook page a clip of the Kentucky presidential hopeful expressing on the Senate floor his opposition to the budget deal, which also suspended the debt limit beyond the 2016 elections.

"The mainstream media did not want to tell the truth about what was in this budget deal. But in the era of social media, you can no longer hide votes for bad policy in the middle of the night," Lee said in a statement. "The American people will find out."

Rather than engaging in a prolonged oration as he's done before, Paul spoke a couple of times at much shorter length during the deal's debate.

The segment of Paul raising a point of order that the agreement, which was signed into law Monday, broke the budget rules, was viewed more than 18 million times by Monday afternoon.

"This deal represents the worst of Washington culture," Paul said early Friday morning. "One of the colloquial ways of putting this is guns and butter. What this deal does is allow one side to have more guns and one side to have more butter. It is the old proverbial guns and butter that is bankrupting this country."

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