The GOP Spenders Did It Again!

House Republicans proved once again today that they are sniveling fakes when it comes to fiscal responsibility. Fully 101 Republicans voted for a 1,018-page omnibus appropriations bill that was delivered in the dead of night at 3AM. It contained $1.2 trillion of sight unseen spending authority for 70% of the government including DOD, Homeland Security, Labor, Health and Human Resources and dozens of lesser departments, and was dripping with earmarks and pork the likes of which has never before been seen even on Capitol Hill.

The GOP vote should have been a resounding 219 “nays”, with a message sent to GOP speaker Johnson and GOP Appropriations Commitee Chair Kay Granger to vacate their positions in disgrace. The fact is, there was no reason whatsoever for these two so-called leaders to sign on to this abomination except to avoid being chastised by CNN and the Washington Post for shutting down the government come Saturday morning.

It has actually come down to that. The GOP ranks on Capitol Hill have become so populated with careerist politicians from safely gerrymandered districts that they actually think their highest calling is to keep the doors open at Foggy Bottom, the paychecks flowing at the FBI, the lights on at the Washington Monument and to make bipartisan nice with their careerist counterparts among the Dems in the House and Senate.

Yet all the while they are truly bankrupting the nation, and at a rapidly accelerating pace. And we do mean accelerating. At $6.423 trillion in 2023, Federal spending stood at 28X the level extant when your editor first landed on Capitol Hill as a 24-year-old legislative assistant to a Republican congressman in 1970.

Alas, by the time we became budget director in 1981 Federal outlays had already grown from $228 billion per year to $657 billion under Jimmy Carter’s outgoing budget, and then went on to $1.151 trillion when the Gipper rode off into the California sunset in early 1989.

Thereafter it should have gotten better because the cold war ended when the Soviet Union was swept into the dustbin of history in 1991—given that the national security functions at that point totaled $342 billion. So nearly 30% of the total budget was ripe for a sweeping cutback that could have been coupled with a long overdue reform of the nation’s sprawling entitlements.

Alas, the military-industrial complex did not go quietly into the good night, the GOP’s noisy anti-spenders soon chickened out on entitlements and the domestic porkers on both sides of the aisle were not about to abandon their log-rolling modus operandi.

Accordingly, by the turn of the century, the spending level had nearly reached $2.0 trillion annually, and then it was off to the races again. Bush the Younger and his neocon globalists launched more Forever Wars, even as they expanded rather than curtailed Social Security and Food Stamps, education spending and much more.

Thus, on the eve of the Great Financial crisis in 2007, Federal outlays were pushing the $3.0 trillion mark, and then it was time for another burst of spending under Obama’s “shovel ready” anti-recession stimulus and Obamacare shortly thereafter. Not unsurprisingly, still another trillion-dollar milestone was crossed in 2016 when Federal spending weighed in at $4.175 trillion.

Needless to say, Donald Trump proved to be no enemy of the Swamp at all, notwithstanding his endless rhetorical declamations. In just four short years he brought the Federal spending total to $5.86 trillion in 2020. That is to say, Federal spending grew by $425 billion per year and nearly 9% per annum during that period.