As predictably as the sun rising in the east, this week before Christmas 2024 has once again catapulted America’s political class and their handmaidens in legacy media outlets into a frenzy of bedwetting over the prospect of a so-called “government shutdown.”
Friday evening—also just like clockwork—the Republican controlled House led by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate pulled the nation back from the brink by passing a short term bill scant hours before the “shutdown” would have forced millions of federal employees to toil without pay during the holidays. (Cue the crocodile tears.) Naturally, no mention was made of the vast majority of those potentially impacted being sluggards in various agencies like the IRS and the Department of Education or FEMA—you know, the nice folks recently exposed for systematically withholding disaster funds in Florida and North Carolina from residentsdisplaying Trump/Vance political signs in their yards.
No, no, no. Politicians and NPR/MSNBC anchors wove heart-rending tales of holiday stress and anguish about to be visited on our U.S. troops, border patrol agents, and veterans caregivers.Straight out of the Bill Clinton playbook created during histhree-week shutdown back in 1995. That “crisis” began on December 16th and ended on January 6, 1996. During those 21 days, Clinton and his White House minions (probably including aide George Stephanopoulos, who this week was forced to apologize for defaming Donald J. Trump as part of a $15-million ABC News settlement with our President-elect) adroitly turned the screws to cause maximum pain to the elderly and poor. Programs like Meals On Wheels ground to a halt…National Parks were closed…and folks in housing projects like the infamous Cabrini Green in Chicago were suddenly cut off from receiving their regular blocks of government-issued cheese.
The howls from constituents predictably sent spineless members of Congress scrambling back to work and the “shutdown” ended shortly thereafter. Since the Clinton years, that’s been the scenario: cry “the sky is falling” as budget talks stall…wait for unions and welfare advocates to gin-up the sob stories…then watch the resolve of House and Senate budget negotiatorscollapse. Rinse. Repeat.
Until this year. Emboldened by their political muscle in November that propelled Donald J. Trump back into the White House along with a GOP-led House and Senate, a strange thing upset the applecart of normal “shutdown” drama: voters decided—to quote TV anchor Howard Beale in the movie NETWORK—“We’re mad as Hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!”
On the Salem Media Group news program THIS WEEK ON THE HILL with Tony Perkins, Epoch Times chief political correspondent Mark Tapscott observed: “This week’s proposal for a huge 1500-page Continuing Resolution to keep funding the federal government was a Christmas tree loaded with things like a 40% pay raise for Congress. People didn’t want it…loudly said so…and by the end of the evening the CR was dead.” Tapscott added that with voters standing on their hind legs at last, the 119th Congress is going to be very interesting to watch; he suggests that it will be unpredictable and a challenge for leaders like Mike Johnson.
Tapcott is right. We basically have a stalemated Congress, with virtually any legislation that may be set forth potentially pleasing half of House members while angering the other half. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich recently stated that Mike Johnson faces “challenges that are bigger than anything I ever faced.” True: if you only have a one, two or three-vote majority in the House, virtually any Member can become Speaker-for-a-day by simply withholding his or her vote.
Bottom line: it will be very hard to pass any legislation in the 119th Congress except for one thing: Donald Trump. He will drive the success—or failure—of both the Senate and the House next year and I could not be happier about that.
As for troublemakers like the teachers unions or welfare advocates or garden variety federal bureaucrats who have been living under a “woke” rainbow during the Biden/Harris years…the gravy train of government largesse is about to pull back into the station. Donald Trump, JD Vance, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are rolling up their sleeves and on January 20ththey’ll roll out the new paradigm in Washington, D.C.
It can be succinctly defined a follows: Pack your bags or else get ready to surrender to bold new efficient leadership over the next four years. Like this week’s annoying, last-minute private sector strikers ranging from Amazon workers to baristas walking picket lines at Starbuck’s…it will quickly become obvious to these government drones that there’s a new sheriff in town and the last thing he’ll tolerate is status quo featherbedding.
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Tom Tradup is VP/News and Talk Programming at Dallas-based Salem Radio Network and serves as Executive Producer of THIS WEEK ON THE HILL with Tony Perkins which is heard on leading radio stations nationwide and can be seen Saturdays at 10am Eastern time on the Salem News Channel.