The Omnibus Spending Bill
- Leaders dropped 6,825 pages of text for their "omnibus" spending bill, plus explanatory materials that include a list of at least 4,000 earmarks, on the doorstep of every American family.
- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., worked with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Democrat leaders to author this example of congressional corruption.
An Egregious Oversight
- The new GOP majority in the House finally will have the chance to use the power of the purse to rein in the reckless administration of President Joe Biden.
- Blocking this $1.85 trillion omnibus bill, and passing a short-term continuing resolution, would allow the new Congress to set funding levels for the federal government in an appropriate and transparent manner after convening Jan. 3.
Promoting a Culture of Death
- The spending bill includes provisions that are cause for concern for pro-life Americans
- $575 million in a global health section allocated for "family planning/reproductive health, including in areas where population growth threatens biodiversity or endangered species."
- This provision sees humanity as a parasite, as a threat to the plants and animals that the bill's drafters clearly see as vastly more important than Americans and their families
Costing at Least $1.85 trillion
- The bill would increase the deficit by $2.65 trillion--$20,000 per household-adding to current inflationary pressures.
- Waiving enforcement of what is known as Statutory PAYGO would increase outlays by $132 billion in fiscal 2023 relative to what the underlying law prescribes.
No Lawmaker Has Read This Package
- No member of Congress is physically able to read all of the spending package before voting on it
- In addition to the 12 regular appropriations bills, the omnibus bill includes two supplemental spending acts and 21 other separate divisions spanning topics as complex and varied as the Electoral Count Act, public land management, and antitrust enforcement.
Offering an Unprecedented Pork-ibus of Earmarks
- Over 4,000 earmarks, aka pork projects, costing billions of dollars that the federal government doesn't have-and that will come out of your wallets
- While hardworking families struggle under the weight of inflation caused by Washington’s reckless spending spree, Congress is going hog wild with wasteful and inappropriate earmarks
Waiving Statutory PAYGO Enforcement, Increasing Inflationary Spending
- The Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010, often called PAYGO, is a budget law put into place by President Barack Obama that requires Congress to pay for new deficit spending over time with cuts elsewhere in the budget.
- By waiving the budget rules, deficit-financed government spending would be much higher in 2023 if this package passes, increasing inflationary pressures.
Intensifying Biden's Border Crisis
- The Biden administration's open border and NGO processing operations have quickly resulted in America's worst-ever border crisis. The omnibus spending bill would prolong this crisis and spend more good money on bad policies.
- Congress should reject the omnibus, defund these operations, and, at the beginning of the next Congress, pass a border security bill that would truly end the crisis.
Even More Funding for Leftist Groups Involved in Immigration
- The omnibus would provide significant money to other departments for immigration grant programs.
- An immigration industrial complex has developed in this country and abroad and Congress needs to cease feeding it more money
- $13 million to the Department of Health and Human Services for migrant and seasonal Head Start programs
- 29 million to DOJ for services and activities provided by the Legal Orientation Program for illegal aliens
-97.4 million to Labor Department for migrant/seasonal farmworker programs, including housing
Rewarding CDC for Incompetence
- Since March 2020, Congress repeatedly has increased funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention despite the agency's poor response to the COVID-19 pandemic
- The bill would reward the CDC for refusing to modernize its data systems by lavishing the agency with more money for data modernization
- Additional money for the CDC would come without holding it accountable for recommendations that schools remain closed for extended periods, that 2-year-olds wear masks, and other policies that harmed children
Providing Self-Defeating Environmental Credits
- The bill would create a verification and registration framework managed by the Agriculture Department for voluntary environmental credit markets
- Farmers, ranchers, and owners of private forestland would be able to generate credits to be sold for projects that "prevent, reduce, or mitigate greenhouse gas emissions."
- One activity that would qualify for a credit is "prevention of the conversion of forests, grasslands, and wetlands."
Doubling Down on Distortion of Energy Supply
- Because of the Jones Act, it's often cheaper for states to import petroleum from other countries rather than do business with oil refineries in the U.S.
- The bill would prevent waivers to deliver oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve on non-Jones Act ships without first going through yet more paperwork from the Homeland Security, Energy, and Transportation departments
Increasing Funding for IRS
- The so-called Inflation Reduction Act included $80 billion in new supplemental and mandatory funding for the Internal Revenue Service.
Providing a Chauffeur for IRS Chief
- A provision in the spending bill reads: Notwithstanding section 1344 of title 31, 17 United States Code, funds appropriated to the Internal Revenue Service in this Act may be used to provide passenger carrier transportation and protection between the Commissioner of Internal Revenue's residence and place of employment.
Raiding Social Security to Fund Woke Union Agenda
- The Congressional Budget Office just reported that Social Security will be insolvent by 2033
Using Defense Funding for Other Purposes
- Of the additional $45 billion in aid slated for Ukraine, only 62% of it would go toward military activities
- A total of $17 billion would go to economic assistance and efforts to support the Ukrainian government
- The omnibus also would direct $2 billion in defense dollars toward so-called clean energy investments
- Billions more would go towards research and other items unrelated to the military
Throwing good money after bad at NIH, Biden Initiative
- The omnibus spending bill would award the National Institutes of Health (NIH) a 5.6% increase in funding, bringing the total to a whopping $47.5 billion, despite the fact that NIH has been uncooperative with Congress on vital issues
- It would give $2.5bn more to NIH and $1.5b more to the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, which is supposed to "support the development of high-impact research to drive biomedical and health breakthroughs."
- If the initiative does indeed offer a more effective and promising approach, then it would make sense to take some of NIH's current $45bn in annual funding and redirect it to the new project.
More Wasteful Food Stamp Funding
- The omnibus spending bill would fully fund food stamps, including the Thrifty Food Plan increase, for fiscal 2023
- It would require a report on the extent of skimming from electronic benefit transfers
- Even before Congress investigated the effectiveness of "Pandemic EBT," where the Agriculture Department sent schoolchildren temporary emergency nutrition benefits loaded on EBT cards, lawmakers authorized a permanent program to send summer EBTs to families with children who qualify for free or reduced-price meals during the school year
No comments:
Post a Comment