How many times have you heard someone say something along the lines of the problem with Congress being we need term limits? I hear it weekly, if not almost daily. It always makes me cringe a little and I try to be polite, or at least as polite as I can be, and respond that term limits won’t change anything because voters are the real problem. I try to put it nicer than that, but sometimes I just swear because “we” vote for these people.
Have you noticed how the fight over the continuing resolution (the one now or any of them ever) always contains new surprises and a ton of new spending? The name starts off with the word “continuing,” which implies it is simply an agreement to keep things as they are – continuing them for a while – but it always included new, horrible things that cost hundreds of million or billions of dollars.
I don’t think they know what the word “continuing” means.
Actually, they do. They’re counting on the public not knowing or not noticing what they’re doing. In order to keep funding things in the government Congress has already agreed to, Members of Congress need what amounts to bribes by proxy to support it. They’ve already agreed to spend the money, now they’re agreeing to keep spending the money but want more money on top of it because Republicans can’t pull their heads out of their rear ends long enough to do the right thing and demand cuts in spending.
If Speaker of the House Mike Johnson just put forward a bill to keep spending where it is, there are a group of Republicans who wouldn’t vote for it. It he put up a bill that would cut spending, there would be a different group of Republicans who wouldn’t vote for it. He needs Democrats to pass it, the only question is how many.
To get them, he has to allow crap into what is already a crap salad – more spending, extending bad programs, keeping bad laws or whatever – to avoid a government shutdown, especially at Christmas.
As far as I’m concerned, I couldn’t give a single damn if the Christmas of all 535 Members of Congress is ruined and the government is shut down for a year, we are going broke and it’s costing us a fortune in the form of inflation in the meantime. Cut the spending, gut the government like a slaughtered pig, and get things under control. Biden’s inflation came about because of his spending, more of it will only make things worse.
I get it; next year Republicans will have more ability to cut things, whatever. Then keep things as they are now by passing a genuine “continuing” resolution. If there aren’t enough Republicans willing to vote for what currently is without changing it, screw their Christmas. They can sit in their DC offices and vote every 15 minutes till the cows come home or enough of them grow the hell up.
If Democrats won’t vote for what the government is obligated to do without milking the situation to suck more money out for their pet projects and donors, screw their Christmases too.
If the Speaker of the House and all the other Republicans can’t message that to the public they should fire their staff. If they aren’t willing to ruin Christmas for themselves and their colleagues, they should resign their seats.
The real problem is us. We keep electing Lucy thinking she will not pull away the football. These people always have an excuse, but they are unwilling to do what is necessary to see what it will take to break the other side.
To get Obamacare crammed through, 52 Democrats lost their seats in the 2010 election. They knew they were going to lose when they voted for it, but they didn’t care. They believed in it. Is there no one on the right with that conviction?
The problem is so many of the seats in Congress are gerrymandered to the point that there’s almost nothing that can happen where an incumbent will lose, so they don’t have to give a damn about what their constituents want or is best for the country. They’ll all be long-forgotten by the time the feces of the fiscal irresponsibility hits the fan, so what do they care anyway?
Nothing is going to change them except changing them. If we can’t get 218 Members of the House and 50 Senators plus the VP and the President all willing to act responsibly and make the tough decisions even if it costs them personally, we might as well shut down the Department of Government Efficiency before it starts because that’s the only efficient thing it will be able to accomplish.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.