Arizona House MAGA Free Caucus Republicans led by Speaker Steve Montenegro, the ones who decided to take a one month siesta away from the State Capitol and ignore the people’s business have chosen to whine and ignore a bipartisan FY26 budget passed earlier this morning in the Senate and forge a continuation budget that will allow them to restart negotiations with both the Senate and Governor Katie Hobbs.
Like their master in the White House, the statement provided by Montenegro and the other MAGA House Free Caucus Republicans is short on facts and long on hypocrisy.
It is very rich to say that MAGA House Republicans have worked in good faith this session when they took the last month off, declined to participate in bipartisan budget negotiations with the Governor and Senate, wasted time processing their own MAGA reactionary budget that Governor Hobbs declared dead on arrival, and decided to adjourn floor proceedings today rather than deal with the fiscal deal passed in the Senate.
The contention that the Senate measure lacks the votes to pass the House has also met a rebuke from Arizona House Democrats who issued a simple post following the release of the MAGA Republican press release that read “Let’s throw it on the board and see what happens.”
It also met disagreement from House Appropriations MAGA Republican Chair David Livingston who, according to AZ Mirror, hinted they had the votes to pass the Senate budget.
According to AZ Mirror, Senate Republicans are also not thrilled with what their House Colleagues are trying to pull with Senate Pro Tem President T.J. Shope saying, “My only thought is I truly don’t know what he thinks can be negotiated that after June 30th that couldn’t have been negotiated in January, February, March, April, May, and last week.”
Earlier today, House Democratic House Leaders Oscar De Los Santos, Nancy Gutierrez, and Stephanie Stahl Hamilton released a video on social media, mocking the MAGA House Republican juvenile behavior for adjourning floor proceedings.
Later, Leader De Los Santos also told AZ Mirror:
“I assume they were trying to explain to their pissed-off members why they abruptly took off for the weekend and aren’t working to pass a negotiated bipartisan budget that would easily pass if it was put up for a vote. All I really heard from some House Republicans is it was more of the chaos, incompetence, and dysfunction we’ve sadly grown to expect.”
Arizona Democratic State Senate Leader Priya Sundareshan urged House Republicans to come back and Monday and move to pass the bipartisan Senate budget, posting:
Stay tuned. Hopefully reality will prevail in the budget process over delusion when the House reconvenes on Monday.
Discover more from Blog for Arizona
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.