Congress, Biden Must Couch All Special Interest Spending to Correct the Economy

Mar 10, 2022

The US House of Representatives has passed a massive $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill meant to avoid yet another government shutdown. The chamber, marshaled by US Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), also passed a short-term Continuing Resolution as a stopgap spending measure that funds the federal government for four days. And then there is the $13.6 billion in emergency spending to address the crisis in Ukraine.

All of this still has to be voted on by the US Senate and then sent to President Biden, but the spending, expected to pass into law, represents a 5.6 percent increase in defense spending and a 6.7 percent increase in non-defense spending levels.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022 (HR2471) includes:

$25.1 billion in funding for agriculture, rural development, and the FDA, a $1.7 billion increase.
$69.6 billion in funding for commerce, justice, and science; an increase of $4.3 billion, also providing $6.1 billion in defense spending, an increase of $323 million with most of this spending is related to the FBI’s national security mission.
$728.3 billion in defense spending, an increase of $32.5 billion (5.6 percent).
$52.8 billion in funding for energy and water programs, up $3.4 billion.
$25.5 billion in funding for financial services and “general government,” an increase of $1.4 billion.
$57.5 billion in appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security and $18.8 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund, totaling $76.3 billion.
$40.4 billion in funding for interior and environment programs, an increase of $1.9 billion.
$197 billion in funding for labor, Health & Human Services, and education programs, resulting in an allocation increase of $15.3 billion.
$5.9 billion in funding for legislative branch programs, an increase of $625 million, including $602.5 million for the US Capitol Police, $87 million more than 2021.
$112.6 billion in Department of Veterans Affairs spending, a $7.8 billion increase, including $14.9 billion in defense spending for military construction, an increase of $6.8 billion.
$56.1 billion in funding for State, foreign operations programs, a $595 million increase, including $295 million for the Countering Russian Influence Fund and $300 million for the Countering PRC Influence Fund, as well as $9.8 billion for global health assistance, $6 billion for global HIV/AIDS assistance, and $698 million for the US International Development Finance Corporation.
$81 billion in funding for transportation and Housing & Urban Development including $27.4 billion for tenant-based rental assistance.

The measure also includes $14 billion in emergency funding to support Ukraine.

Why This Is Important

While most of these provisions do little more than continue the status quo of an overreaching federal government into the matters of the states, what the bill does not do is address the immediate needs of all Americans; the “common good.”

Our spendthrift federal government – and the bureaucracy that actually does the business of governing the nation via unlegislated regulation – has moved so dramatically away from its limited mission, as prescribed by the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that the very notion of the “common good” has become a catch-all permission slip for every activist and special interest group in the country.

The Framers, in direct opposition to the government feed trough version of “common good” held by today’s political grifters, had a very specific, limited definition in mind when they included the “General Welfare” provision into the Constitution.

James Madison, the Father of the US Constitution (who built largely off of George Mason’s works), stated:

“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, everything, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit of the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare.”

Thomas Jefferson declared:

“...‘provide for the general welfare,’ was an extension of the powers specifically enumerated to whatever would promote the general welfare…that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money.”

Any reasonable exercise in researching the matter reveals that the federal government – as it was intended to exist – was a body of very limited focus, a focus that, since the fascism of the Wilson Era, has grown gluttonously fat. The Framers clearly declared the “general welfare” to mean the good of all citizens, not an open-ended mandate for Congress to create federal purview and demand the taxpayers pay for their benevolence.

To that end, what is in the best interest of the American people today? I suggest that the pressing matters facing the American people are exclusive to the economy, security, and repairing a wholly broken federal government; a federal government that no longer serves the people and, instead, colludes with the global elites for their seat at the globally oligarchic table.

Each and every one of us should be raising the roof with our elected officials – respectfully but firmly – to remind them that votes are political currency and the American people are the bankers. We need to mandate to them that regardless of what the bureaucratic fascists in Washington prefer, the nation demands that immediate attention be given to:

The Economy: The economy must be repaired in real-time and that means replacing the politicians of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and Security & Exchange Commission with people actually understand the laws of economics.
Energy Prices: The federal government should immediately suspend all environmental hurdles to energy independence and embrace an “all of the above” policy to indigenous energy production. We were energy independent and the third-largest energy exporter in the world just a little over a year ago. There is absolutely no reason gasoline should be $4.50 per gallon on average (one report has gasoline at $9.00 per gallon in California).
Decoupling from ESG: The United States – led by Congress because the Biden administration is in collusion with the World Economic Forum – must create and pass, in a veto-proof manner, legislation that prohibits ESG score use by any financial institution indigenous to the United States and severely punishes any foreign financial entity – to include sovereign wealth funds – who embraces ESG scoring.
Supply Chain: The state national guards should immediately be deployed to any backlogged port of entry to alleviate any supply chain bottlenecks that exist. Further, Congress should pass a short-term moratorium on all Union regulations that inhibit the satisfaction of any supply chain correction.
Food Prices: Congress should immediately suspend all bureaucratic regulations that contribute to the elevation of food prices less those that serve to assure the safety of the food being produced.
Independence of Infrastructure: Congress must be forced to expunge all purview over “social engineering” and “social justice” from its lexicon and rededicate itself – by force of Constitutional Convention if need be – to the boundaries of enumerated powers as set forth in the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Short of Congress being moved to act on these measures under the threat of election loss (and because they are cuckolded by the deep pockets on K Street), I suggest that Governors examine the awesome power afforded to them in the 10th Amendment and seriously consider the full-throated use of nullification to achieve the “common good” as the Framers intended. Blue states that have enacted “sanctuary” status thwarting federal immigration law have set the precedent for nullification on matters of Constitutional authority. And should the impotent US Supreme Court rule against that use of nullification, those rulings should be nullified as well.

The only good – the only “common good” that is universal to every American is freedom. As the Framers insisted in the Declaration of Independence, the government’s exclusive role – the role to which it is limited – is the protection of that freedom. Today, the elected class in Washington, DC, and its enablers on K Street and beyond are selling our freedoms to the highest bidder...and the “big guy” gets his ten percent.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness...”

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