E-Newsletter No. 99 March 2022
Last month, we ended the newsletter with a bad news warning that the authoritarian Left will never stop in their continued attempts to fundamentally transform our country. The Biden Administration had proposed its “Build Back Better” legislative agenda, which had zero support from any member of the Republican party, along with some very valid concerns expressed by a few members of the Democrat party, which prevented BBB from being passed. Instead, Congress decided last month to pass a Continuing Resolution to prevent a shutdown of the government and punted the problem to March 11th.
We posed a question as to whether it would be possible to get through the remainder of the year with a string of Continuing Resolutions and no additional new spending. Unfortunately, on March 9th the House and on March 10th the Senate passed a $1.5 trillion spending bill, which included several new spending programs.
The worst part of the legislation is that it resurrected and included spending on “earmarks”. The 2,741-page bill that was drafted by the Democrats was released to members of the House at 2:00 am on March 9th before being voted on later that day. 367 pages of the bill were written to list over 4,000 items, which totaled approximately $10 billion of “congressionally directed spending.” That is a polite term for “incumbent re-election funds”. In years past, this practice was called “bringing home the bacon.” The spending includes funds for New York subway tunnels, biking trails in Vermont, Presidio Park in San Francisco, and for the Palo Alto History Museum. If a citizen doesn’t use the subway tunnels in New York or biking trails in Vermont, or travel to California, you have to wonder how this spending supports the General Welfare of the country as a whole.
The good news is that there will be an election on November 8, 2022. Elections do have consequences. Unfortunately, the consequences of the last election have not been very good. A partial list of these consequences includes the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, an open border and 2 million illegal immigrants this past year with no end in sight, rising crime rates, record high gasoline prices, and an increasing level of inflation that has not been seen since the late 1970s.
Just a side note – contrary to what you may have heard, the high gasoline prices are not due to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Those increases were put into place when Democrats decided to curtail domestic oil production. The administration is now looking to replace that domestic production with purchases from Iran, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.
US Debt Clock – – February 1st – $89,950 per citizen / March 1st – $91,050