Another epic failure?

When you think about it, Congress has ONE job to do - yet they can't do it.

Hard to believe, but in just a few weeks a scene like this will be playing out in front of my house. The corn is just in the early stages of drying out now.

One thing that really impressed me about the first months of the Donald Trump administration volume 2 was all the largesse they found in government. It’s not like I didn’t suspect it was there all along, but having the evidence was nice and gave us all an idea of just how deep its tentacles were.

But when the Senate crows about starting on what’s supposed to be its job before taking off for a month, one has to ask why the process is so flawed.

While I don’t really remember the budget process in my native Ohio, I became much more familiar with it when I moved down here. In Maryland where I lived, the General Assembly meets for just 90 days each year (I always called it the “90 days of terror”) and has to approve the budget compiled by the governor during the time. (Their General Assembly can subtract and move spending around from the governor’s proposal, but they can’t add without a separate BRFA bill, short for Budget Reconciliation and Financing Act.) Yet when the time for sine die came around in early April, they were done with almost three months to spare in their fiscal year, which ends June 30.

Here in Delaware, it’s somewhat the same although their session lasts from January to the end of June, with exceptions: if a budget isn’t complete they’ll go until it is, so we’ve had extensions into the first couple days of July before. In the First State, the governor proposes a “recommended budget” but the General Assembly can do what it wishes with that framework. Being a Democrat trifecta, I don’t think we’ve had a budget vetoed in years - it’s usually the argument over other issues that holds one part or the other of the budget hostage and pushes it past the deadline. This year the capital budget was held up by Republicans who were upset about the power grab by the state within SB159, so a last-minute compromise of pushing back its effective date was reached.

Now I’ll grant that states have a lot less complication to deal with than the federal government, but they generally manage to get their work done on time. So why can’t Congress buckle down and get 12 appropriation bills done in 9 months?

I know President Trump sent a proposed budget request to Congress in May, putting them a bit behind (usually these are released in the late winter/early spring timeframe) but as DOGE was doing its work we were learning where government was wasting our money. As OMB Director Russell Vought noted in that proposal:

The recommended funding levels result from a rigorous, line-by-line review of FY 2025 spending, which was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.

We also considered, for each program, whether the governmental service provided could be provided better by State or local governments (if provided at all). Just as the Federal Government has intruded on matters best left to American families, it has intruded on matters best left to the levels of government closest to the people, who understand and respect the needs and desires of their communities far better than the Federal Government ever could.

One has to ask why Democrats (and some Republicans) are defending “niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.” They’re not entitled to our money, since we’re the ones doing the hard work of earning it by giving a day’s labor for an agreed-upon wage - or winging it as sales-based commission workers. Is the government going to sit at my work desk and design and detail buildings and spaces for clients? Thought not. And Lord knows they can’t write for The Patriot Post like I do. Multiply that by all the plumbers, electricians, truck drivers, farmers, and any other people who produce the things and provide the services we need, not just push paper and flaunt their authority over us.

Instead of taking their annual vacation to go kiss the rings of their various financial backers and pay lip service to their constituency, why aren’t the House and Senate members spending this time doing one of their core functions? Would they rather place the country in yet another contentious late September as the looming threat of a government shutdown divides us only to eventually maintain the status quo?

It was their ignorance and pursuit of power over the rest of us that put us $37 trillion in debt. We’ll never pay that off in my lifetime, but we can at least begin to put in the effort with some fiscal responsibility on their end.

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now.