In an early betrayal of the incoming Trump administration, and more importantly, American taxpayers, GOP U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson will help pass a 1,500 page Continuing Resolution to keep the government from shutting down on Friday.
The massive spending bill won’t just keep the government running, said Vivek Ramaswamy, who will copilot President-elect Trump’s government efficiency panel with Elon Musk. It adds billions in new spending, not least, a whopping 40-percent pay raise for legislators.
And, in another cute maneuver, a provision would allow Congress to block the new Trump administration from investigating congressional committees and their members. One almost-certain purpose: Protect the possibly illegal activities of the select committee that investigated the mostly peaceful protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. A new report from the House Oversight Committee accuses former GOP Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wy.) of colluding with a key witness on her testimony, and the J6 committee itself of withholding or otherwise not archiving key records.
Few if any lawmakers likely know what’s in the gargantuan bill. Ramaswamy and Musk say Congress must reject it. Musk urged followers of his X feed to contact their congressmen and senators to tell them to block the wasteful measure.
“No Reason” for Bill
In September, Johnson pinky swore that no such “Christmas Omnibus” would pass. But now, all of a sudden, that’s changed.
And of course, Johnson had good excuses.
“Johnson said he had talked to Musk and his DOGE partner Vivek Ramaswamy on Tuesday night about their concerns, The Hill reported:
“I was communicating with Elon last night,” Johnson said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning. “Elon, Vivek [Ramaswamy] and I were on a text chain together, and I was explaining to them the background of this. And Vivek and I talked last night, about almost midnight, and he said, ‘Look, I get it.’ He said, ‘We understand you’re in an impossible position. Everybody knows that.’”
“Remember, guys, we still have just a razor-thin margin of Republicans. So any bill has to have Democratic votes,” Johnson said. “They understand the situation. He said, ‘It’s not directed to you, Mr. Speaker, but we don’t like the spending.’ I said, ‘Guess what, fellas, I don’t either.”
Except that he’ll spend anyway.
In a long X post, Ramaswamy explained what’s wrong with the 1,500-page behemoth, aside from being the usual way to avoid passing a real federal budget.
“It’s full of excessive spending, special interest giveaways & pork barrel politics. If Congress wants to get serious about government efficiency, they should VOTE NO,” Ramaswamy began.
The “true cost,” he wrote this morning on X, is not $380 billion, but “far greater due to new spending”:
Renewing the Farm Bill for an extra year: ~$130BN. Disaster relief: $100BN. Stimulus for farmers: $10BN. The Francis Scott Key Bridge replacement: $8BN. The proposal adds at least 65 cents of new spending for every dollar of continued discretionary spending.
The legislation will end up hurting many of the people it purports to help. Debt-fueled spending sprees may “feel good” today, but it’s like showering cocaine on an addict: it’s not compassion, it’s cruelty. Farmers will see more land sold to foreign buyers when taxes inevitably rise to meet our obligations. Our children will be saddled with crippling debt. Interest payments will be the largest item in our national budget.
The pharmaceutical tycoon rightly claimed that Congress has no excuse not to have passed a budget given that it knew the Friday deadline was coming in September: “The urgency is 100% manufactured & designed to avoid serious public debate.”
Continued Ramaswamy:
The bill could have easily been under 20 pages. Instead, there are dozens of unrelated policy items crammed into the 1,547 pages of this bill. There’s no legitimate reason for them to be voted on as a package deal by a lame-duck Congress. 72 pages worth of “Pandemic Preparedness and Response” policy; renewal of the much-criticized “Global Engagement Center,” a key player in the federal censorship state; 17 different pieces of Commerce legislation; paving the way for a new football stadium in D.C.; a pay raise for Congressmen & Senators and making them eligible for Federal Employee Health Benefits. It’s indefensible to ram these measures through at the last second without debate.
“They are trying to get this passed today while no one is paying attention,” Musk wrote over an earlier X post that asked an obvious question: “How can this be called a ‘continuing resolution’ if it includes a 40% pay increase for Congress?”
No Questions for Congress From DOJ
Indeed. And just what it includes legislators don’t likely know. Senator Dick Durbin, the far-left Democrat from Illinois, was mystified.
When CNN’s Manu Raju asked about the pay raise for a Congress that didn’t do its job, Durbin was flummoxed. He was unaware he received a big pay raise.
“What about the media?” Durbin replied. “Think about that for a second…. Half of your listeners are not there anymore. You’re still getting the same paycheck. What’s going on?”
Raju noted the obvious: Taxpayers don’t pay media salaries.
And in a move as cynical as it is sinister, hate-Trumpers on Capitol Hill inserted a provision to protect themselves from disclosing records that might reveal what actually happened on January 6 and with other efforts to get Trump:
Upon a motion made promptly by a House officer or provider for a House Office, a court of competent jurisdiction shall quash or modify any legal process directed to the provider for a House Office if compliance with the legal process will require the disclosure of House data of the House Office.
That provision is significant, given the Oversight committee report. It says the J6 Committee kept evidence out of its final report. And without directly saying it, the report accuses the J6 Committee of destroying crucial evidence by not archiving it.
And worse still, the report accuses hate-Trump former GOP Representative Liz Cheney of witness tampering.
“Based on the evidence obtained by this Subcommittee, numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, the former Vice Chair of the January 6 Select Committee, and these violations should be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the report says:
Evidence uncovered by the Subcommittee revealed that former Congresswoman Liz Cheney tampered with at least one witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, by secretly communicating with Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s attorney’s knowledge. This secret communication with a witness is improper and likely violates 18 U.S.C. 1512. Such action is outside the due functioning of the legislative process and therefore not protected by the Speech and Debate clause.
The report reproduced Cheney’s text messages with Hutchinson, a key witness before the J6 Committee. The report alleges that Cheney suborned perjury from Hutchison. Hutchison, it alleges, repeatedly lied to the committee about key events that day.
