There’s a lot of profligate spending going on in Washington these days, but approximately $1 trillion of it was forestalled Wednesday afternoon, when Senate Republicans used the filibuster to block debate on an as-yet unresolved bipartisan “infrastructure” bill.

We use scare quotes around the word “infrastructure” because, thanks to the Democrats, the word no longer means what any of us think it means. But to the Republicans’ credit, this measly trillion really does sound like infrastructure: Around $400 billion is slotted for baseline “transportation” funding, and $579 billion will go to new transportation projects, water, broadband, and improving our power grids. Is there still plenty of room in which to shovel and hide pork? Sure. But it seems that the really ridiculous stuff — the Kirsten Gillibrand-type stuff — has been yanked out.

Recall that back in April, the New York Democrat asserted: “Paid leave is infrastructure. Child care is infrastructure. Caregiving is infrastructure.” With thinking like that, it’s a wonder we’re only $29 trillion in debt; only $85,000 per citizen in debt; only $227,000 per taxpayer in debt.

Lawmakers expect to reach agreement on the unfinished legislation by early next week, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s gambit to get a head start on the bill’s passage went down in flames yesterday. As The Wall Street Journal reports:

The vote failed, with 49 in favor and 51 against, short of the 60 needed to open debate. [Schumer] switched his vote to no, which he said gave him the option to bring the bill up again.

Senate Democratic leaders had hoped to start the process Wednesday of moving both the infrastructure bill and a separate $3.5 trillion package of child care, education, antipoverty and climate provisions expected to pass with only Democratic votes.

The failed vote Wednesday pushed the timeline for both deeper into the summer, although lawmakers involved in the infrastructure negotiations said they expected to have enough of an agreement in place to move forward by Monday, if Senate Democratic leaders agree to schedule another vote.

This is just the infrastructure bill, though. The real behemoth, the real outrage, is the Senate budget proposal: that $3.5 trillion package of non-infrastructure, Big Government spending. There’s even word that Democrats will try to include amnesty for illegal aliens within the package. That bill is likely to pass the Senate and become law without a single Republican vote, as Democrats plan to avail themselves of every accounting trick necessary to skirt the Senate’s existing budget-reconciliation rules and thereby avoid a Republican filibuster.

Worse yet, that $3.5 trillion sticker is what we might call the base price. With taxes, title, and dealer prep, the Democrats’ used car salesmen are likely to soak our children and their children for something like $5 trillion, according to an independent analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Why? Because socialist Bernie Sanders chairs the Senate Budget Committee. As the Journal’s editorial board writes: “The budget will be built on phony assumptions and gimmicks. Democrats know their proposed tax hikes and dubious ‘pay-fors’ won’t come close to fully funding ‘every major program that President Biden has asked us for’ — as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed.”

That would be the same President Biden who, as our Nate Jackson noted on Tuesday, went out to reassure the American people about the economy and saw the stock market drop 700 points. It’s also the same Biden who recently said: “There’s nobody suggesting there’s unchecked inflation on the way. No serious economist.” Except, that is, for some serious economists.

As South Carolina Republican Congressman Ralph Norman put it, “Spending $3.5 trillion and expecting it to combat inflation is like throwing gasoline on a fire and hoping it goes out.”

In short: This is fiscal rape, and we taxpayers are the Sabine women.

“History has shown time and time again,” wrote former Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn in his 2012 book The Debt Bomb, “that debt can bring nations to their knees. Great powers such as Britain, Spain, France, the Ottomans, the Soviet Union, and the Roman Empire declined economically before they contracted, collapsed, or were conquered.”

More recently, our Mark Alexander also warned about both the debt bomb and the inflation bomb.

If and when things blow up, at least it won’t have been a surprise.