Lee Facebook Post on Budget Deal Reaches 53 Million Americans
WASHINGTON – A Facebook post by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) thanking Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) for leading the fight against the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 has been shared over one million times and has reached over 53 million Americans in just three days – making it one of the most viral social-media posts by a political figure this year.
“The American people are fed up,” Sen. Lee said of the 3:00 AM Friday morning Senate vote that, among other things, raided $150 billion from the Social Security Trust Fund. “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. The American people will find out."
The Facebook post in question features a two-minute video of Sen. Paul making a point of order against the budget deal noting that the legislation in question reallocates over $150 billion in payroll taxes from the Social Security Old Age and Survivors Trust Fund into the Social Security Disability Trust Fund. Immediately after the video featured in the post, the Senate voted 64-35 to waive Paul’s point of order.
"Many of my colleagues – like Sen. Lankford and Sen.Cotton – have already spoken, or will soon speak, on this floor about the long list of structural reform ideas that are still sitting on the sidelines of this debate,” Lee said earlier Thursday before the budget deal vote. "But you won’t hear much about them in this debate – because there won’t be any real debate on the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015… no amendments; a fast-approaching deadline; and, in the end, a take-it-or-leave-it choice, forced upon us with our backs up against a cliff. This isn’t how Congress is supposed to operate,” Lee continued.
"We should be the party that looks out for the most vulnerable among us. But we won’t be, so long as we lack the courage to enact the structural reforms that our retirement and disability insurance programs need to survive for generations to come."
To put the numbers for Sen. Lee’s post in perspective, the most popular video on Barack Obama’s Facebook page has 1.6 million views. The most watched video on Hillary Clinton’s campaign Facebook page has over 900,000 views, and a popular post on Donald Trump’s Facebook page has just over 100,000 likes and 3,400 shares.
