Inside Congress's Extensive To-Do List

I’d like to start off by saying Happy Labor Day!  Labor Day, which first became a Federal holiday in 1894, signals the unofficial end of summer.  After Labor Day, most children will return to school if they have not already.  Most outdoor public pools in colder climates will shut down.  In addition to students and teachers, another group of Americans will return to work after an extended vacation.  Believe it or not, school children can sometimes behave more like adults than this group of Americans.  This particular group currently boasts a not-so-impressive 8 percent approval rating with the American public.  For those who have not figured it out yet, the group I am referring to is the United States Congress.    

 

Congress has quite an extensive to-do list when it returns from the August recess.  The month will probably start with unity as both houses seek to pass a $7.9 billion emergency spending bill to help the victims of Hurricane Harvey.  The partisan battles of left vs. right and establishment vs. anti-establishment will surely resume towards the end of the month as Congress tries to put together a budget before the government runs out of money.  President Trump released his budget proposal earlier this year, giving it the title “A New Foundation for American Greatness.”  Should Republicans follow this budget blueprint to a T over the next ten years, they should achieve a balanced budget by the year 2027; the first time that will have happened in a quarter century.  The budget also contains several initiatives that will lead to more jobs and higher economic growth including reigning in the out-of-control federal spending, simplifying the tax code, rolling back regulations, and reforming immigration policy.  Republicans should do everything in their power to make sure that the budget passed at the end of this month looks strikingly similar to this budget proposal. 

 

But that task will be easier said than done.  This budget proposal assumes the repeal of Obamacare, which Congressional Republicans have yet to do; despite promising their voters that they would do so for the past SEVEN YEARS!  In addition, the President may have vastly underestimated the power of the swamp which he has repeatedly promised to drain.  Many members of the swamp have bought the influence of the career politicians who serve in Congress.  Sadly, the loyalty of many members of Congress lies with the swamp creatures as opposed to their constituents and the American people as a whole.  Members of the swamp have a lot of power to prevent real change from taking place.        

 

The upcoming budget debate will test the commitment of Congressional Republicans to President Trump’s agenda.  As Tucker Carlson pointed out last week, Congressional Republicans seem more enthusiastic about preserving DACA, a key part of the Obama legacy, than any idea President Trump has put forward thus far.  Most Congressional Republicans have shown very little enthusiasm for the border wall with Mexico, one of the President’s key campaign promises.  Perhaps even fewer have come out in favor of the RAISE Act, which would reform America’s legal immigration system.  The Democrats will surely threaten a government shutdown if the budget does not reflect their priorities, which certainly do not include the wall.  Republicans have a tendency to cave to the Democrats for fear of receiving the blame for a government shutdown.  If the election of President Trump has taught Congressional Republicans nothing else, it should have taught them that voters are sick of their timidity.  If the voters wanted a budget that reflected Democratic priorities, they would have elected a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress. 

 

A Democratic budget would include funding for a variety of programs that the Founders never envisioned the government subsidizing.  One such program, Planned Parenthood, receives about half a million dollars in Federal funding.  Defenders of Planned Parenthood will talk about all the good it does.  If “doing good” is the litmus test for Federal funding, then there’s no end to the list of programs that would have to receive Federal funding.  Groups such as The Salvation Army, March of Dimes, Samaritan’s Purse, the American Red Cross and the American Cancer Society are far more deserving than a group that performs hundreds of thousands of abortions a year; accounting for more than one-third of all abortions performed nationwide.  Even if Planned Parenthood loses its Federal funding, it should not worry about losing money as long as celebrities continue to donate all of their game show winnings to the “charity.”     

 

The National Endowment for the Arts, another program the Democrats apparently see as absolutely essential to the nation, routinely receives more than $100 million in taxpayer dollars.  “Piss Christ”, an NEA-funded performance, consisted of a photograph of a crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine.  Since this happened thirty years ago, it baffles me why the NEA still receives federal funding.  They must have really good lobbyists. Click here for some more examples of NEA-funded performances and exhibits that most Americans would be shocked and outraged to find out that their tax dollars paid for.

 

There are many other examples of government’s inefficient and inappropriate use of tax dollars; too many to go through in one article.  Lauren Southern put together this eye-opening video highlighting millions of dollars in government waste. While I admire her passion, I find it kind of sad that a Canadian is more interested in keeping our government honest than most Americans.           

 

Congress has a bad habit of “kicking the can down the road.”  Unfortunately, it appears as if POTUS has bought into this bad habit.  He had threatened to shut down the government if the upcoming spending bill, which would fund the government through early December, did not include funding for the border wall.  President Trump apparently wants to make sure the December budget bill includes funding for the wall.  Do Republicans really think the Democrats will put up less of a fight in three months?  Wouldn’t it make more sense to pass one big bill that funds the government for an entire year?  The budget and spending process highlights everything that is wrong with Washington, D.C.     

 

With midterm elections just over a year away, Republicans absolutely have to prove to the voters that they have the guts to enact conservative legislation into law despite never-ending opposition from the four horsemen from hell: government, academia, pop culture and the media.   If Republicans fail to deliver on their promises, they will suffer the consequences of electoral defeat; either by losing their primary to a more effective steward of conservatism or by losing the general election to a Democrat.  The favorable senate map may prevent catastrophic losses in the Senate; as Democrats will have to defend 25 seats next year; while the Republicans will only have to defend eight.  Republicans in Congress can prove themselves worthy candidates of re-election by starting to check off items on their to-do list, sooner rather than later.