Posted on 03/10/2022 8:40:30 AM PST by Red Badger
Congress should use the omnibus to vacuum up its unnecessary spending, to control both our national debt and runaway inflation. Yeah, right.
News flash from Washington: Congress is rushing to pass a bill it hasn’t read, full of earmarks and special favors for campaign donors. Where have we heard that before?
The House introduced the omnibus bill after midnight Tuesday, and it’s a whopping 2,741 pages. A combination of poor planning, Democratic delusions, and an upcoming vacation (seriously!) have Congress rushing to ram through a bill totaling thousands of pages, and trillions of dollars, in a matter of hours. Again.
Stop Overspending
Based on leaked press reports, the legislation has some prominent provisions. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said the bill would include about $14 billion in humanitarian and military assistance for Ukraine. Another $15 billion would go towards purchasing additional Covid tests and treatments, in the hopes of staving off any new variants of the disease that may emerge in the coming months. Previous rounds of Covid spending and equipment still haven’t been used.
Reports also note the bill is a veritable spending spree of pork for special interests, with more than 4,000 earmarks. If Democrats in Congress and the Biden administration think we should add this new spending to our $30 trillion (and rising) national debt, they’re not trying hard enough to find economies.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the budget-busting bill Democrats rammed through last March in the name of “Covid relief” would spend out $528.5 billion in the fiscal year ending this September 30, and another $114.3 billion in the fiscal year starting October 1. That’s a total of $642.8 billion in the next two years alone that Congress could re-purpose—much of it in the form of bailout funds to states and localities (read: government employee unions) that are already flush with cash.
Congress should use the omnibus to vacuum up some of this unnecessary spending, to control both our national debt and runaway inflation. But instead, lawmakers will likely engage in the time-honored Washington tradition of log-rolling, whereby Republicans agree to vote for Democrats’ wasteful spending priorities in exchange for Democrats voting for Republican initiatives.
Rushed Process
The spectacle of both parties wasting money they don’t have is matched only by the chaotic process leading up to the bill’s enactment. Congress has to pass the bill released Wednesday by midnight on Friday to avoid a government shutdown. The end result will resemble a late-night cram session before the deadline for a term paper, but with much higher stakes: Trillions of dollars in spending, and lawmakers who should have learned not to procrastinate decades ago in school.
Democrats bear much of the blame for the last-minute rush. For months, progressive lawmakers have attempted to convince themselves that unified control of the House, Senate, and White House meant that they could repeal provisions like the annual Hyde Amendment rider that prevents federal funds from going towards abortion.
But a recent Senate test vote on a bill to codify Roe v. Wade couldn’t obtain a simple majority, much less the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Instead of facing up to this legislative reality last summer, Democrats spent months wasting time, dragging a process that should have ended last September (the fiscal year technically began last October 1) into mid-March.
Another complication: Democrats’ plan to go on “retreat” — vacation — for the second half of this week: “[House Majority Leader] Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told House Dems they might have to head back to D.C. early from their Philadelphia retreat to avoid a government shutdown.”
The ironies abound—both of Democrats being in retreat, and of lawmakers not wanting to cut short their junket at a swanky hotel to do the jobs taxpayers actually pay them to do. Its seems surprising Democratic leadership wouldn’t just ask all their members to vote by proxy from Philadelphia, so they can continue their vacation.
This Is Why People Hate Washington
The omnibus process is about as anti-democratic (with a small “d”) as you can get—a handful of lawmakers and unelected staff sitting in a private room and deciding the fate of trillions of dollars in spending. When the proverbial puff of white smoke finally emerges, rank-and-file legislators get the “choice” between passing a bill they haven’t had time to read and shutting down the federal government.
If Republicans really want to show they’re serious about responsible governance, they should promise an end to this annual sorry spectacle of an omnibus if they win back control of Congress in November. The American people deserve better, and they should vote to demand it.
Chris Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group, and author of the book, "The Case Against Single Payer." He is on Twitter: @chrisjacobsHC. Previously he was a senior health policy analyst for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a senior policy analyst in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Health Policy Studies, and a senior policy analyst with the Joint Economic Committee’s Senate Republican staff. During the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, Jacobs was a policy adviser for the House Republican Conference under then-Chairman Mike Pence. In the first two years of the law’s implementation, he was a health policy analyst for the Senate Republican Policy Committee. Jacobs got his start on Capitol Hill as an intern for then-Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from American University, where he is a part-time teacher of health policy. He currently resides in Washington, D.C.
Trying to break the bank so they can have their socialist utopia....party members living high on the hog ruling over the little people.
Soon after this debacle they will announce that all 401Ks etc are hereby the properrty of the Feds, you know, to “pay down” the debt.
The Senate is sure to play along. China Mitch is all for spending other people’s money.
“Soon after this debacle they will announce that all 401Ks etc are hereby the properrty of the Feds, you know, to “pay down” the debt.”
I saw all that coming 30 years ago. That’s why very little of my assets sit in an IRA.
Thanks to little Princess Jenny Saki and her boy, Jo Jo the Pedo Clown, INFLATION IS AT A 40 year HIGH. Wag The Dog wars can be a real pain in the ass for people who live in the real world and not the Swamp at the District of Corruption. Don’t blame me. I WENT TO THE FRIGGIN’ POLLS and proudly voted for PRESIDENT TRUMP. I didn’t sit on my ass hiding in the basement filling out mail-in ballots for Jo Jo the Pedo Clown and his Indian sidekick.
How many Republicans voted for it?
Omnibus spending bill allocates $40 million for ‘democracy programs’ in Venezuela
The massive $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill currently being debated in Congress contains tens of millions of dollars in spending on programs meant to benefit political adversaries abroad and has been widely criticized by conservatives who say that the legislation is packed full of items on the Democrat Party’s progressive wishlist.
The bill, which is over 2,700 pages and was released Tuesday night, provides tens of millions of dollars to programs that appear to benefit Venezuela and Russia, who are currently in the middle of a global oil crisis generated by Russia’s unprovoked invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
“Of the funds appropriated by this Act under the heading ‘Economic Support Fund’, not less than $40,000,000 shall be made available for democracy programs for Venezuela,” the bill states.
The bill also calls for $6 million in spending on an international leadership fund that includes money going to Russian participants “engaging in free market development, humanitarian activities, and civic engagement” but will “not be used for officials of the central government of Russia.”
The bill provides just under $10 million for improving television and radio broadcasting capabilities in countries across the globe, including in communist Cuba.
“This funding, championed by Republicans and Democrats alike, supports brave civil society leaders and human rights activists in Venezuela who are opposed to the Maduro regime,” a House Appropriations Committee spokesperson told Fox News regarding the Venezuela funding. “This investment is consistent with House Democrats’ support for democracy and human rights around the world.”
“The bill is loaded with the Biden administration’s radical progressive policies,” the foundation said. “ It fails to reverse the COVID-19 emergency or the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates, as conservative leaders have called for, and instead adds even more emergency COVID-19 spending. It would increase annual funding for the IRS to $12.6 billion. It doubles down on the Green New Deal style government subsidies for green energy and climate policies, such as ‘a historic level of funding’ for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). It also includes more than $4 billion in Congressional Direct Spending, or earmarks.”
The spending bill includes $575 million for “family planning” internationally, Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy pointed out, $286 million for Title X funding to “keep the lights on at Planned Parenthood, $32.5 million for the pro-abortion U.N. Population Fund, and $200 million for a brand new “Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund” to help promote abortion across the globe.
The Dems have been looking at 401Ks and licking their chops for years.
These people are malignant sociopaths.
And now they have made a reason to act...
I know the IRS and FBI make out like bandits in this bill.
Anyone know if any of the RCV provisions Deep State has been stuffing into bills it tries to pass are in the omnibus, too...
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