After the House and Senate voted Friday to secure passage of a $1.14 trillion federal spending bill, Arkansas' two U.S. senators in opposition each released statements — John Boozman calling the passage a "setback" and Tom Cotton referring to the bill as "rotten to its core."
Boozman and Cotton, as well as Reps. Rick Crawford and Bruce Westerman, voted against it, The Associated Press reported. Reps. French Hill and Steve Womack voted for the package.
Boozman said the bill "busts the budget caps with $50 billion in new spending."
"This bill does little to provide regulatory relief for Arkansas farmers, small businesses and community banks, while continuing to fund the worst of the Obama administration's overreach," he said.
Despite a vote against the spending package, Boozman said he does support certain elements that are beneficial to Arkansas, including provisions to "incentivize small businesses to make investments and expand."
Cotton said "working Americans lost out" as a result of the bill's passage, referencing a potential negative impact on the nation's workforce with what he said would be a quadrupling in the number of foreign guest-worker visas.
"A rotten process yields a rotten result, and this 2,000-page, trillion-dollar bill is rotten to its core, resulting from secret, backroom negotiations and getting dumped in the dead of the night on Americans with barely two days before the vote," Cotton's statement read in part.
After Friday's final legislative act on the bipartisan bill in the Senate, the spending package is set to go to President Barack Obama for final approval, according to The Associated Press.
Read Saturday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.