By Renee Parsons
As budget chaos reigns supreme, a multitude of brain-dead partisan Americans remain in an ‘ignorance is bliss’ state of awareness as mockingbird media dumbs down the current Congressional struggle to rescue a dangerously broken fiscal system. Some of those partisans are elected Members of Congress; especially of the RINO class.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy has revealed a stunning lack of strategic leadership with a reckless ‘go home’ order to House Republicans over the weekend rather than a “Stay and persevere until the work is done” order as the September 30thend-of-the-fiscal- year deadline approaches.
It is helpful to recall that all ‘revenue raising originates” in the House of Representatives (Article I, Section 7) as Controller of the Federal purse strings and that the last President to approve a balanced budget was Andrew Jackson (1829-37) who also eliminated the Federal debt. It might be helpful to recall that a balanced budget is about taking in more revenue than is spent; such as today’s expected 2024 revenue of $5 Trillion that will be offset by $7 Trillion in expenses. How does that make any sense to anyone seriously operating a business or one’s own personal finances on that philosophy?
Even as millions of Americans have no formal Wharton School training, it is amazingly straightforward to understand that Biden Administration’s proposal of an explosive $7 trillion budget imperils fiscal sanity, even with a meager 8% overall cut, leaving a deficit at $1.4 Trillion; thereby creating a decade worth of deficits at approximately $20 Trillion.
As if that was not enough fiscal insanity, with a current debt of $33 Trillion at a 5% interest rate, interest payments on the debt are calculated at $1.65 Trillion annually. Adding the annual Trillion dollar deficits to the annual interest payment creates a gargantuan stratospheric number beyond anthropologic understanding.
With an obvious shortage of bean counters at the White House and in Congress, any President who would offer a budget so far outside the realm of ever being balanced or why Congress has allowed a grossly inflated deficit to accrue for decades is inexplicable – all parties contributing to this mess need to clean out their desks and go home and allow those with a whit of common sense to take charge – after all, that is what elections are about.
The September 30th deadline has never been a secret, although since 1979, the President’s budget proposal has been manipulated by Congressional leadership as the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders and the House Speaker engage in their own closed door alliance creating a bloated ‘omnibus’ package for every fiscal year. An omnibus generally consists of several thousand pages presented at the last minute just before the December holidays guaranteeing that no Member of Congress has an opportunity to thoroughly read, understand its contents or offer amendments. Therefore, Members of the House especially are deprived of fulfilling and conducting their constitutional responsibility.
An Omnibus historically would feature payback to the donor class include funding for twelve federal departments, $858 boondoggle for the military industrial complex and the latest frivolous ‘woke’ fads or in vogue trends, otherwise known as pork barrel and bells-and-whistles as the country is driven deeper into a ditch every year.
Today the unelected administrative staff has enormous influence over its own budget, as the Omnibus has allowed massive bloated budgets to go through the process without any serious Congressional oversight or scrutiny until after the fact.
In other words, 1979 may have been the last time when Congress actually performed its job, conducted a line by line review for an entire Federal department including late night harangues on the House floor and debates on the nuance in every department, sorting the wheat from the chaff as it approved a legitimate budget and took responsibility for the debt and how taxpayer funds were being allocated.
Speaker McCarthy’s capitulation in May accepting the Biden Administration’s debt ceiling proposal included a pledge to the Republican caucus that an agreed-upon package of twelve separate single-subject appropriation bills would be ready to roll when Congress returned from its extended six week holiday (and we all know how badly they needed a six week paid vacation.) Rather than limit that six weeks hiatus to four weeks, those appropriation bills were not prepared as promised. Leaving the House in its current crisis, attempting to, at the last minute, finagle a process that would achieve significant budget cuts as anticipated and avoid a government shut-down.
As Freedom Caucus unity fragmented, the Republican caucus will wisely follow the Gaetz plan to bring twelve appropriation packages to the House Floor to be voted on individually with Congressional scrutiny and a bona fide legislative process in order to meet the September 30th date or thereabouts. It may mean late night hours and will take discipline to focus on the details of each of those twelve packages. The American people will be watching every roll call vote.
As an added kerfuffle, the Pentagon announcement that its military efforts in Ukraine would be a exempt from a House potential shutdown raises the question who exactly is running the government as funding for the obscene Ukraine war with no valid national security interest continues to be a flashpoint.
On the Senate side, Sen. Ron Johnson (Wisc.) blocked a rule in objection to a Senate version of a government ‘minibus’ spending package. In a somewhat miraculous outcome, the Republican caucus united to defeat the ‘minibus’ which included five appropriations rather than the usual twelve spending package, yet with the same concern. By combining twelve federal department budgets into one Omnibus package, elected Members had little to no opportunity review its contents or offer amendments when necessary.
In a rare display of RINO and Republican caucus unity, with a sixty vote threshold required, the final 49-48 vote denied approval of the ‘minibus’ with only Sen. Lisa Murkowski Not Voting.
As the House continues its deliberations, frail Republican leader McConnell commented that a shutdown “always been a loser for Republicans, politically” which is not accurate. After the last shutdown in 2013, Republicans picked up nine new Senate seats to take control of the Senate 54-44 including McConnell’s election.
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Senator Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) suggested that ‘emergency steps may need to be taken to avoid a shutdown’ as Sen. Roger Wicker (Miss) ranking member of the Senate Armed Service Committee expressed ‘concern’ about a potential shutdown with Sen. Kevin Cramer (ND) suggesting House Freedom Caucus members should ‘feel good about the debt ceiling deal negotiated with Biden” while an anonymous Senator predicted ‘it won’t end well for Republicans.” This is old school Republicans talking as Murkowski, Wicker and Cramer are all RINOs who vote predominately with the Democrats. Wicker and Cramer are both up for election in 2024.