Biggs a “no”: Arizona representative votes against aid bill.
U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs stood against nearly every member of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, voting “no” on the bill that included nearly $8 billion intended to aid the Hurricane Harvey relief effort.
The Arizona Republican said he joined the short end of a 419-3 vote because the bill included a provision that ties foreign aid to new education programs in developing countries.
In a statement, Biggs alluded to concerns about how the disaster relief will be paid for and said he expects the aid bill will be tied to an effort to increase the government’s debt limit. But spending on foreign education killed his support for the bill that otherwise sailed through the House.
“Shortly before today’s vote, with little time to read the final version of the package, the House attached hurricanerelief funding to ... a bill that expands the size of government and ties foreign assistance to new education programs in developing countries,” Biggs said. “I firmly disagree with attaching disaster-relief funding to a piece of legislation that needlessly expends taxpayer dollars to support international education.”
U.S. Reps. Justin Amash, R-Mich., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., were the other members who voted against the Harvey measure, standing against increased debt.
“Congress should provide disaster-relief funding, and we should pay for it now instead of billing our children and grandchildren for it,” Amash said in a tweet.
“With $20 trillion dollars of debt, and in the absence of a budget to guide spending, I believe that unscheduled spending should be offset by equal cuts elsewhere,” Massie told the Washington Examiner. “This bill recklessly increases the national debt because it contains no spending offsets.”
For Biggs, the vote was another example of his willingness to stand on losing ground for what he sees as fiscal principles.
Earlier this year, Biggs was the only member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus to vote against the Republican-led health-care bill. He did so because he considered it far short of the full repeal he promised his southeast Valley constituents. That bill passed the House, but the issue may have died in the Senate when Sen. John McCain dramatically voted against his party’s last-ditch effort in July.
In 2016, Biggs, then the president of Arizona’s state Senate, blocked efforts for months to restore funding to the health-insurance program for children in low-income families. Biggs eventually allowed the Senate to vote on the measure, which passed over his objections.