THE MORNING RANT: Until House Republicans Commit to Eliminating Omnibus Spending Bills, I Can’t Be Bothered to Care about the Speaker Situation

There is still not a Speaker of the House of Representatives. I suppose I should be upset, because a great many conservative partisans and pundits whom I respect are distraught about this situation. But unless and until the Republican-led House starts asserting control of spending and appropriations, I can’t find myself getting worked up.

Single-item spending bills is the reform I care about. So long as appropriations continue to be done by “omnibus” legislation, there is no chance to ever get spending under control, nor is there a possibility of ever defunding some of the most egregious government spending.

If I am understanding the accounts I read of Kevin McCarthy’s election as House Speaker, he agreed to move toward multiple votes on spending matters so as to win confirmation from “far right” Republicans, but once he had the gavel he reneged. If that is so, he deserved to be deposed. And until there is a Speaker that will allow such votes, we’re probably better off without one.

There is nothing in the Constitution mandating that Congress must roll all legislation into one bill. In fact, the presumption would be otherwise - that the legislative body can and should pass multiple pieces of legislation, especially when it comes to authorizing spending.

The great Oilfield Rando is constantly publishing a stream of actual appropriations for which our government keeps going deeper in debt. Here is just one of many that I see today at @RandoLand_us. In 2022 the government provided a $418k grant to Yale University so it can do research on “strengthening the HIV care continuum for transgender women living with HIV in Malaysia.”

Yale has a $40 billion endowment, but it is somehow the role of taxpayers to give Yale money to study transgenders in Malaysia. But under the House’s current process, the only way for southern Republicans to get funding for something like lock repairs on the Tennessee River, is for those Republicans to vote for the omnibus funding that sends money to Yale to study transgenders in Malaysia.

In addition, I am really sick of the requirement that the conservative base must compromise and support swamp Republicans whose constituency is really the DC establishment, while that favor is never reciprocated. We held our nose and voted for McCain and Romney for President, then when Trump ran on populist conservative issues such as border security, the moderate Republicans defected and tried to get Hillary and Biden elected, so as to teach us a lesson.

The same applies to the election of the Speaker of the House. Real conservative representatives sucked it up and voted for Ryan, Boehner, and other swamp creatures who always worked to advance the Democrats’ spending agenda. But when an actual conservative, Jim Jordan, was recently put to the vote, a block of NeverConservative Republicans voted him down.

If swamp Republicans have a policy of never, ever allowing a real conservative to have the Speaker’s gavel, then I really don’t care about the appearance of “Republican disarray.”

The “power of the purse” by controlling the House of Representatives is just about the most important political power in the Constitution, especially considering the current government bloat. Refusal to vote on single item appropriations is an abdication of that power.

A day of reckoning for the federal deficits and national debt is coming. Why not make that day now?

Until we have a Speaker who will assert the constitutional power to appropriate, or not appropriate money, and until we use our Constitutional authority to defund the left’s agenda when we have the power to do so, I cannot get too worked up about the lack of a Republican Speaker whose role is to fund the Democrats’ agenda.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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