The Democrats have turned in a proposal, nearly 2000 pages long, to cover the rest of the fiscal year. Republicans are losing their cool over “hidden earmarks and massive spending that would be enacted into law without a review process,” as Fox News reports.
This isn’t the tax deal everyone has been so agitated about lately. This is the omnibus spending bill, prepared on a huge stack of Etch-A-Sketch machines by the same Democrat-controlled Congress that never got around to setting tax policy or writing a budget. You know how Obama leaned on a metaphor about America being like a car stuck in a ditch during the midterm elections? This omnibus bill is a note tucked in America’s windshield by the people who stripped the car, and swiped our paychecks out of the glove box, telling us how much they look forward to spending all that lovely money. Also, our left rear tail-light is out.
“Omnibus” is a Latin term meaning “total mess.” The bill is packed full of spending, in an effort to keep every vitally necessary penny of a $3.5 trillion budget orbiting the black hole of a $13.8 trillion national debt. Americans for Limited Government president Bill Wilson told Fox, “A vote for the continuing resolution is a vote for another trillion dollar-plus deficit, and that is simply unacceptable to all Americans. Any politician in Congress that has ever promised to reduce the deficit should vote 'no' on this continuing resolution.”
You may have thought the midterm elections were a clear message to the acolytes of Big Government about the American public’s frustration with madcap deficits and unrestrained spending. The Democrats saw the elections as a burglar alarm going off, and this omnibus bill is them grabbing a bag of swag and heading for the nearest window before the budget cops of the 112th Congress show up.
Isn’t it funny how people wanting to keep their own earnings, arguing against the threat of a massive tax increase, are “greedy,” but that term is never applied to those who try to loot the Treasury with eleventh-hour emergency legislation?
The Republicans are speaking up about this, at various volume levels. One source told Fox “all hell is breaking loose,” but a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says Hell is still contained inside its cage, although the bars are starting to creak. In the House, incoming Speaker John Boehner warns his caucus “will work to kill” the spending bill if the Senate sends it over as-is.
Senator John Thune’s hometown newspaper, the Rapid City Journal of South Dakota, quotes him as saying, ”The attempt by Democrat leadership to rush through a nearly 2,000 page spending bill in the final days of the lame-duck session ignores the clear will expressed by the voters this past election. This bill is loaded up with pork projects and should not get a vote. Congress should listen to the American people and stop this reckless spending." I’m not sure burglars can be fairly accused of “ignoring” those wailing alarms, but maybe Thune is just being polite.
John McCain also denounced the bill as “loaded down with earmarks and pork-barrel spending,” which he called a “direct betrayal of the majority of voters on November 2nd.” South Carolina’s Jim DeMint is promising a filibuster, which Democrat Dan Inouye of Hawaii, the Senate Appropriations Committee chairman, says he is “cautiously optimistic” he can defeat. Let’s hope his optimism is misplaced.
The continuing budget resolution that has kept the government running thus far is due to expire on Saturday. If the omnibus bill, or another continuing resolution, is not passed, the government will “shut down.” No one in the United States should give the slightest consideration to any media outlet that tries to blame that on the Republicans. This is a one hundred percent Democrat disaster, from an incompetent Congress that was too busy taking over health care to write a budget, right on down to the cretins trying to stuff three trillion bucks into a pork barrel before they get run out of town.
