Congress loves to pass the worst parts of their agenda during the holidays. They count on you being too busy with shopping, baking, decorating and the like while they squeeze the noose just a little bit tighter around the neck of the idea of freedom. The worst example of this was in 1913, when Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, after the vast majority of Congressmen had already left for Christmas, our history and our economic freedom was forever changed. Today, just before taking their holiday recess, Congress just passed a $681 Billion dollar spending bill, none of which is paid for by any kind of budget cuts or other tax offsets. Speaker Paul Ryan has been a "champion" of fiscal responsibility, and always rails against unchecked spending. He is always campaigning on the fact that we must balance the budget, that the enormous national debt shackles future generations of Americans. While those statements are correct, his actions fail to even attempt to live up to his ideals.
This new spending bill includes all kinds of items that the American people have been firmly against, but we shouldn't be surprised with our elected representatives totally ignoring the will of the people. This entire bill is a total capitulation to the Obama agenda, and is basically caving in to allowing Obama cementing his "legacy" of "fundamentally transforming America.
One of the biggest items in the bill which is a direct slap in the face to the American people and especially to those of us living in West Virginia, is the appropriation of $500 Million in the next fiscal year to fund Obama's unconstitutional climate agreement, which the global elite just finished putting together in Paris. Republicans had stated that they would fight this to the bitter end, but now they have turned their backs on the American people, who have been largely skeptical not just of the supposed "settled science" of "climate change", but skeptical that this agreement will actually do anything substantive to help the environment. Obama is attempting to enforce this agreement without the blessing of the people, and without a vote from our representatives in Congress.
Another item in the bill which is directly ignoring the will of the American people, is another year of continued funding of Planned Parenthood. Yes, another year of government subsidized infanticide, another year of encouraging these poor, desperate women to deny their children a chance at life so that government employees can enrich themselves with harvest and sale of "fetal tissue". As much as some may argue that Planned Parenthood provides other services, with the advent of Obamacare, and healthcare in general being subsidized, there is no reason for them to exist, since anyone needing these services can get them from a regular OB/GYN.
Speaking of Obamacare, another piece in this bill is a couple of supposed "fixes" to the healthcare law, which really do nothing to help the American people with access to care or increased affordability, but are simply accounting tricks to make it harder to repeal and replace the law once Obama has left office. This is a win for the drug companies, insurance providers, and labor unions, but a big fat fail for the American people.
Next on the list is a particularly concerning item. Congress has appropriated $1.6 Billion to provide "refugee and entrant assistant activities". Basically our tax dollars are paying for not only bringing in at leas 10,000 Syrian refugees which we have no good way of properly vetting their background, but it is also going to pay for the "resettlement" of thousands of illegal immigrants across the country. I personally will not capitulate and refer to them as "undocumented individuals", they are criminals. The news media has repeatedly tried to spin the influx of people coming across the border as it being a flood of "unaccompanied minors", but the evidence shows that most of these individuals are between the ages of 12-17, and most of them have already had gang or drug cartel affiliation, and once in the US, will likely become members of MS-13 or other Latino gangs, and just contribute to the huge problems we are already dealing with in the southwest and across the country.
So called "cyber security", has also been slipped into this gigantic spending bill. As with most anything the government does, anything having to do with "security" usually means less liberty for the American people. This is actually less a security bill and more of swinging the door wide open for further unwarranted surveillance of the American People. Members of Congress have decried this part of the bill, especially because they state that this should be a stand alone bill to be fully debated on its own before passage. Unfortunately, the dissent of a few was far from being enough to keep this draconian set of measures to be passed.
The sad truth is that this is all par for the course for Congress. most of these measures really should be dealt with individually, but like Frank Fritz from American Pickers, Congress loves a bundle. This ensures that measures that would normally get a full and honest debate can be rammed through at the last minute, because like any normal American, Congressmen just want to be done so that they can get home and spend the holidays with their families. One other point to note is that this bill totally ignores the "sequester" spending freezes that were previously enacted to attempt to reign in the deficit. So this bill directly adds over half a Trillion dollars to the national debt without any kind of offset.
These are just the major points of the bill, there are many other slabs of pork stuffed in to keep individual Congressmen happy. Things such as tax cuts for NASCAR race tracks and horse racing are in there as well, but they would tell you that's just a totally normal cost of doing business in Congress. So just know as you are all gathered around the table this Christmas, Congress just heaped a huge helping of debt onto your plates once again this year.
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