Paxton Sues Biden Over Omnibus Spending Bill

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden and officials in his administration over his signing of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, the most recent omnibus spending bill.

Paxton contends that Biden’s signing the bill was “unlawful” because less than half of the members of the House of Representatives were present physically for the vote.

“The U.S. Constitution requires that a quorum of members of the U.S. House of Representatives be present for the lower chamber of Congress to conduct business,” Paxton’s office said in a press release. “When the House passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 in December 2022, fewer than half of its members were present and more than half voted by proxy.”

The lawsuit comes after Paxton filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent the spending bill from being implemented, making the same argument about a lack of attendance in the House during the vote on the bill.

“Nowhere does the U.S. Constitution authorize the House to pass trillion-dollar bills when more than half the members are in their homes, vacationing, or are anywhere physically other than the United States Capitol Building,” Paxton said in a statement. “Our Founders would be turning over in their graves if they could see how former Speaker Nancy Pelosi used proxy voting to upend our constitutional system. That is especially true regarding the $1.7 trillion bill that should have never been ‘passed.’ Joe Biden, who’s been in Washington for half a century, should have known he couldn’t legally sign it either. But he never seems to let the law get in the way of him doing whatever he wants to do.”