As if it were not painful enough for Republicans to watch the vaunted Red Wave merely ripple across their ankles, they now must endure 2022’s final insult: A Red Wave of deficit spending courtesy of lame-duck House Democrats, triumphant Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer of New York, and Senate GOP “leader” Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Fiscal responsibility be damned, Democrats are riding one whale of an omnibus spending bill. The $1.7 trillion Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 washed in on Monday at 11:48 p.m.
Its 4,155 pages are thrice as long as Leo Tolstoy’s classic doorstop, “War and Peace.” This averages $409,145,607.70 per page. Taxpayers should be seasick.
The omnibus’ 3,213 Democrat earmarks include “federal funds for LGBTQ+ museums in New York, community spaces for gender-expansive people in Ohio,” the Club for Growth discovered, “and $3.5 million to fund the Office of Diversity and Inclusion in Congress.”
It also allocates:
-$300,000 for a “Continuous Plankton Recorder survey”
-$3 million for bee-friendly highways
-$3.6 million for the “Michelle Obama Trail” in Georgia
-$212.1 million available for federal prosecutions related to Jan. 6 —essentially an anti-Trump slush fund
-$410 million for “enhanced border security” —in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, and Tunisia
-$575 million for family planning “in areas where population growth threatens biodiversity or endangered species.”
-$1,563,143,000 for “border management requirements” that shall not “be used to acquire, maintain, or extend border security technology and capabilities.” So, $0 to stop illegal-alien invaders but $1.56 billion to “process” and rush them into the homeland.
Want border security? Move to Egypt.
Even worse, the omnibus runs through fiscal year 2023. The American people just gave Republicans a House majority of 222 versus Nancy Pelosi’s 218. But the omnibus snatches the GOP’s power of the purse until Oct. 1!
Voters hired a Republican House to tell President Joe Biden: “No DHS money until you seal the border. No HHS funds until you demand China’s answers on COVID-19’s origins. No Pentagon budget until it stops its newfangled, gender-bending ways. No FBI outlays until it sings about pressuring Twitter to censor the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story.
McConnell is helping Democrats castrate House Republicans for 10 months. If they took control on say, Aug. 1, waiting two months might be tolerable. But they take the gavel 13 days from this writing!
Jan. 3 is two Tuesdays hence, just 48 hours after the Times Square ball drop. The Revolutionary Army is at Yorktown’s city limits, and McConnell is surrendering to General Cornwallis.
Despicable.
Even worse, this is anti-democratic.
Democrats screamed all fall about “democracy!” Now—along with their jumped-up bootblack, McConnell —they grind the popular will into the garbage disposal. Rather than scream, “Bloody murder!” McConnell laughs with Democrats as the Republican House’s fiscal-restraint tools slide into the sewer for half of its two-year mandate.
McConnell could lead 40 other GOP senators, filibuster this trash, and demand a short-term continuing resolution until the GOP House arrives. But that would take courage.
A half-eaten plate of calamari could lead the Senate GOP more valiantly than the live squid who now fails this duty. As McConnell gurgled in a floor speech on Monday: “The Senate should pass this bill.”
McConnell has turned the Senate GOP minority into the Make a Wish Foundation for Democrats. From helping to raise the national debt limit twice (in exchange for nothing), pass a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, and adopt the $52 billion CHIPS corporate-welfare extravaganza, McConnell repeatedly recruits enough gelatinous Republicans to help Democrat dreams come true.
McConnell rarely gets anything in return. When he trades horses, Schumer scores two stallions, and McConnell wins a wheelbarrow of fertilizer.
This is revolting, repugnant, and reprehensible. And, as 2024 approaches, this fiasco will convince the already demoralized GOP base that there really is no point in knocking on doors, manning phone banks, or voting Republican.
Merry Christmas.
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.