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December 19, 2024

Congress Gives Drunken Sailors a Bad Name

The awful spending bill in Congress deserves to be put out to pasture.

The budget bill that is dead on the House floor isn’t the problem; Congress is the problem.

Congress’s budgeting process has been badly broken for 50 years, and it arguably started with the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. According to National Review’s editorial board, “Congress has never actually passed an entire budget on time according to its rules.” Instead, we get increasingly consequential battles over massive bills that no one has time to read but without which the government will shut down.

The results are inexcusable, infuriating, and destructive.

In 1974, the $475 billion federal debt reached a postwar low of 24.6% of GDP. The current debt, at $36.2 trillion, is about 123% of GDP. Fox News reports, “The federal government’s budget deficit in the recently concluded fiscal year also totaled $1.834 trillion, ranking the third largest in U.S. history.” Servicing the debt now costs more each year than the Pentagon’s budget.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is facing some well-deserved criticism for the latest budget bill disaster, a 1,547-page monstrosity that contained the usual eye-popping doozies. It was released Tuesday, leaving little time before Friday night’s shutdown deadline. Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna artfully compared it to “a certain sandwich that’s made of feces.”

Johnson promised in September that there would be no more of this legislative malfeasance, and yet here we are again — more malfeasance and more promises to do things differently next time. “By doing this [now],” Johnson explained, “we are clearing the decks, and we are setting up for Trump to come in roaring back with the America First agenda. That’s what we’re going to run with gusto, beginning January 3, when we start the new Congress when Republicans again are in control.” He added that fiscal conservatives will “finally do the things that we’ve been wanting to do for the last couple of years.”

Like the battered woman listening to the drunk guy ask to be let back in the house, we’ve heard that one before.

Still, calling Johnson the best speaker Democrats have ever had and other similar criticism is overwrought and unfair given what he has to work with — a tiny majority that isn’t exactly unified. Of some Republicans, Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie quipped that they’d “rather run over their own mom with a car than to vote to cut spending.” Massie also became the first Republican to say he’ll “vote for somebody else” as speaker come January. Meanwhile, this fractured 219-211 GOP majority must combat a unified Democrat-controlled Senate and Democrat president.

Arguably, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer bears more blame than Johnson does. “The GOP House actually passed nearly half of appropriations bills this year,” notes the Wall Street Journal editorial board, “and Susan Collins and Patty Murray passed almost all the Senate bills through the Appropriations Committee. But Mr. Schumer refused to bring them to the floor. He wants the end-of-year jam session when everyone wants to leave for Christmas, and he prevailed again.”

To that point, Schumer gloated that he was “pleased” with the measure being “free of cuts” to spending “while also securing Democratic priorities.”

This bill is inexplicable and inexcusable, but Johnson is only one player in a half-century history of gross dereliction of duty and violation of constitutional oaths. Course correction will take a long time.

Today is a great day to start. Thanks to Donald Trump, JD Vance, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy, it might begin to happen.

The four men joined forces to defeat this awful spending bill. Their campaign began with Musk’s X post early Wednesday: “This should not pass.” He later added, “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!”

Likewise, Trump took to social media to inveigh against “the ridiculous and extraordinarily expensive Continuing Resolution, PLUS.”

Within hours, the deal had all but collapsed, and Republicans are returning to the drawing board.

Trump and Vance aren’t exactly spending hawks, mind you. “Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief, and set our country up for success in 2025,” the duo said in a statement, adding that they want “a temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS combined with an increase in the debt ceiling.” Later, Trump said “the smartest thing” Congress could do would be to “get rid of” the debt ceiling entirely. “It doesn’t mean anything, except psychologically,” he added.

Musk isn’t quite on the same page with them, however. Musk demanded, “No bills should be passed [by] Congress until Jan 20,” and he criticized the exact spending provisions touted by the president- and vice president-elect.

Other Republicans totally rejected attaching the debt ceiling to this deal at the last minute. Representative Mike Rogers huffed, “It’s complicated enough without that.”

Regardless, the deal’s collapse leaves Congress once again scrambling to stave off a shutdown before midnight tomorrow. That’s precisely how Democrats want it.

Follow Nate Jackson on X/Twitter.

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