By Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired – November 16, 2024
In 2020 when the pandemic was beating up every aspect of our society the Congress concocted a 5,593-page-Bill monstrosity for Covid-19 relief, The Cares Act. Of course, it passed; nearly everyone could use a little relief from Covid and the taxpayers were stuck with the Bill, all $1.8 trillion dollars. But here is the pathetic part; under the guise of helping Americans through the pandemic, members of Congress took the opportunity to pork-up the Bill with dozens, if not hundreds, of earmarked funding directives that had absolutely nothing to do with Covid or Covid relief. Here is a sampling:
$10 million for “gender programs” in Pakistan,
$300 million for fisheries,
$100 million for NASA,
$300 million to Endowment for the Arts,
$300 million to Endowment for the Humanities,
$300 million to Public Broadcasting,
$500 million for Museums and Libraries,
$720 million to Social Security Administration,
$315 million to the State Department,
$90 million to the Peace Corp,
$492 million to National Railroad Passenger Corp,
$526 million grant to Amtrak.
$4.7 Billion in foreign aid to nine countries.
The takeaway from this example is that under different circumstances, each of these expenditures could have/should have seen the light of day in one or more congressional committees where expert witnesses would have testified to the pros and cons of passing the funding.
The second takeaway is that the Covid Relief Act was not a one-off occurrence. Producing multi-thousand-page Bills has become the norm. No one who votes for them has actually read them and therefore do not know what they are voting for or against. Should we be borrowing money for earmarks that have never been exposed to public scrutiny? If viewed separately by the American taxpayers, would they all pass the smell test? Absolutely not.
For years politicians have been emphasizing the need for infrastructure spending. So, in 2021 Congress finally passed, in a bipartisan vote, a $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Bill which, by the way, is also funding universal pre-K, child care, enhanced child tax credit, earned income tax credit, Affordable Care Act subsidies, Medicaid expansion, medical hearing benefits, affordable housing, Pell grants, children’s nutrition, immigration, state and local tax deductions, etc. etc. etc. Only about 25% of the expenditures actually exist for real infrastructure such as roads, bridges and airports. What happened to the remaining $900 Billion?
We just finished a fiscal year with $1.8 trillion in deficit spending, up from $1.7 trillion in 2023.
Read the rest of the story here.
[Ed: time for American’s to face reality: Congress has no motive to reign in spending because the electorate forgets and gets used to the increased burden on them between the two year reelection span. And, Congressmen does not want to give up a lucurative job with increasing power to a pleb in their district. The rare ones do, but they’re few and far between. Time for the states to step in with an Article V convention to PROPOSE a spending limit on Congress for our grandchildren’s sake. Congress’s over spending benefits them, not us, we the people.]
