The U.S. Senate Friday approved a $460 BILLION spending bill sent to it by their “esteemed colleagues” in the House to “keep the government going” until March 22, when another funding bill will be “needed” to feed the beast.
And, in so doing, both houses not only offered Americans a dazzling example of pork-packing that even most owners of sausage plants would envy, they served up another educational moment in the long history of politicians relying on the Hegelian Dialectic of presenting two false choices as their options.
The choices are defined by them, controlled by them, and shown to us as “either fund all the special pork, or fall pray to a dangerous loss of what we claim are essential government ‘services.’”
Said “services” on the whole not sanctioned by the U.S. Constitution, not really “services” because we are forced to pay for them, and, of course, said “services” already woven into the governmental system by previous generations of politicians using their own Hegelian Dialects to expand the government.
But, be happy, fellow tax-slave! All is well. A recently sat “New House Speaker” was involved, and so was the high-integrity Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), so you know the new $460 billion spending bill must be awesome.
Still not convinced? Well, don’t argue with class-act-Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), for, as the Associated Press reports via NewsMax, Chuck emerged from the vote to say:
“To folks who worry that divided government means nothing ever gets done, this bipartisan package says otherwise.”
How about you? Do you think that, perhaps, the less their “government gets done,” the greater your capacity to make decisions for yourself and keep your earnings, and the higher your degree of freedom?
The AP continues:
“He said the bill's passage would allow for the hiring of more air traffic controllers and rail safety inspectors, give federal firefighters a raise and boost support for homeless veterans, among other things.”
Not one of which is cited as an enumerated power in the US Constitution that Schumer, McConnell, Mike Johnson, and the rest of the careening Congressional crew swore to uphold.
For those searching for more specific information about this form of political grand larceny and payoff, Reason’s Eric Boehm has yet to be entirely censored by our glorious government overlords, and he writes:
“The partial budget deal—which contains six of the 12 appropriations bills that make up the discretionary portion of the annual federal budget—is overflowing with earmarks to fund lawmakers' pet projects. All told, there are more than 6,000 earmarks in the bill, costing taxpayers more than $12.7 billion, according to Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah)…”
Of course, the terms “discretionary” and “mandatory” spending also are false dialectical catch-words. The “mandatory” spending they often cite in DC includes mostly unconstitutional money-showering on things like, oh, sending weapons to foreign nations, keeping US troops on bases overseas, unconstitutional Medicare and Medicaid, the Ponzi Scheme of Social “Security”, and multiple other things that, under any strict reading of the so-called “rules” of the Constitution, would label “oath-breakers” all of the people involved in passing any of it.
But that’s the next phase, and, of course, it also will be packed with delicious pork in the form of “earmarks” just to add insult and injury to the insult and injury.
“Many of the earmarks in the package seem like things that would be better funded by local or state taxpayers, who at least might stand to benefit from projects like new sewer systems, new runways and other upgrades for tiny rural airports, and a plethora of highway projects. Some are truly head-scratching, like Sen. Tammy Baldwin's (D–Wis.) $1.4 million earmark for a solar energy project in Wisconsin, one of the places in America least well suited for a solar farm.”
And, just to get “granular,” as the saying goes, The Heritage Foundation’s David Ditch revealed that said “new sewer system” is for the benefit of Lisa Murkowski’s Alaska.
$4 million. I’m sure you’re pleased that the increased deficit and debt burden placed on generations born into tax slavery is being expanded to help breach the Constitution and provide much-needed money to Murkowski’s pool of potential voters and their need to flush human waste.
What’s that, you say? You don’t live in Alaska, and likely never will live there? Well, have no fear. Thanks to the absolute contempt these fatuous wranglers have for the US Constitution and the even deeper hatred they seem to have for the basic ethical truism that it’s wrong to steal money from people, you can live anywhere, be considered an “honorary” resident of any locale that the political class want you to fund.
Thus, notes Boehm:
“Plenty of others make no sense for the public to be funding at all. Like a $3.5 million earmark secured by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D–Mich.) for The Parade Company, which runs Detroit's annual Thanksgiving Day parade. Or the $2.5 million earmark that will help build a new kayaking facility in Franklin, New Hampshire, curtsey of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D–N.H.), as well as $2.7 million line item to help build a bike park in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, a town with a population of less than 2,300 people.”
I’ve had encounters with Jeanne Shaheen in NH. The first time I spoke to her was over the phone in 1995, when she was a state senator. I had information I wanted to provide about a bill. Ahh, but, alas, the chat was brief. She yelled at me, saying, “I don’t have to listen to this! You’re just against this bill!” and hung up.
And those who follow Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) on X know that it wasn’t just Dems in the Senate who were involved in the pork-packing.
“The same could be said for several Republican-based earmarks too. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) has inserted at least eight earmarks into the bill, forcing federal taxpayers to put up more than $33 million for things most will never use, like a new trail at Coastal Carolina University and an ROTC facility at the University of South Carolina. Among the dozens of earmarks inserted by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R–Alaska), perhaps the strangest is the $4 million grant for the ‘Alaska King Crab Enhancement Project.’"
At least that last one’s for royalty.
Would one be off-base to think that these blowhards imagine themselves as a form of “royalty”? After all, the old “Royal We” of monarchies stood for the king or queen claiming they represented the entire nation-state, and now, politicians have replaced them, even claiming that their collectivist negation of our individual rights somehow means it’s “self-government,” when it’s actually usurpation of our liberty.
Are they the new royals?
Are we to think we are “free” just because we are faced with the Hegelian Dialectics of “choice” they throw at us from both government-expanding parties?
Or can we come to a better understanding about freedom here…
This first-half of their “government shutdown averted” move tells us that they don’t have a clue about freedom. But we can see the truth, and it’s up to us to tell them.
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