mark.young@manateeherald.com
Any Republican who voted to pass a 4,000-page bill that was dumped on them the night before having to vote on spending another $1.7 trillion while in a record $31 trillion debt needs to go.
How does a 4,000-page bill even get written without anyone knowing what was being written in the first place?
Republicans supporting this kind of taxpayer spending process lack the intestinal fortitude to take a stand for the American taxpayer who will now have to pay for such things that include:
1. $200 million for a “Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund,” for gender programs in Pakistan. If you remember, democrats tried to get this, and a lot of these other programs funded during the “Build Back Better” monstrosity.
Joe Biden has essentially been successful in getting just about all of that spending that outraged Americans into his last three bills.
Republicans celebrated the stopping of Biden’s financially destructive Build Back Better bill, but can no longer claim victory and must admit failure because of more spending like this:
2. $286 million for the baby killers at Planned Parenthood.
3. $105,000 for an LGBTQ+ mentoring program for a Pittsburgh Big Brothers and Big Sisters program.
4. $1.2 million for LGBT support centers at San Diego Community College, $856,000 for facilities and equipment at an LGBT Center in New York and $750,000 for the TransLatin Coalition.
5. $3.6 million for a Michelle Obama walking trail in Georgia.
6. $1.5 million for the lesbian and gay community services center in New York.
7. $3 million for bee-friendly highways. Huh? This program is designed to plant wildflowers along certain sections of the highway to attract bees without giving a single obvious thought to how many bees will end up squashed on the windshields of fast-moving highway traffic.
8. $3 million to the New York Historical Society and the American LGBTQ+ Museum Partnership Project.
Now that is just some of the nonsensical spending but the real doozies include $7.5 million for research to develop, “a better understanding of the domestic radicalization phenomenon,” which essentially translates to the fake news theory that MAGA Republicans are semi-fascist, and as Biden said, “represents a danger to our democracy.”
In other words, it’s $7.5 million of liberal spending to target Conservatives. And some Conservatives supported this spending. Ridiculous.
Close to $575 million is set aside for family planning/reproductive health. Sounds good until it goes on to explain that it’s for areas where population growth threatens biodiversity or endangered species.
Huh?
It’s essentially a plan to promote abortion and reduce population growth, not “family planning/reproductive health.”
We grow tired of these, “you have to vote for it to see what’s in it,” monstrosities of wasteful taxpayer spending and Republicans who voted for this nonsense should be ashamed of themselves for letting democrats get away with this.
Now, there were some good things in this bill and Republicans were successful in ensuring defense spending was increased instead of the democrat-proposed decrease.
But that was the deal with the devil to get this bill passed.
The rest of this bill is wasteful spending while we suffer with record inflation, a looming recession and is unforgivable. Let our elected representatives be put on notice that this is unacceptable.
I applaud our own Congressman Vern Buchanan who voted no on this insanity.
In a statement, Buchanan said, “This reckless cycle of tax, spend and borrow is bringing us to the brink of bankruptcy and placing an immoral burden on our children and grandchildren.”
These all-encompassing omnibus spending bills must stop. Defense spending should not be a part of another bill process where politicians insert their pet projects at the expense of you and I.
Defense spending should always be a standalone bill in order to prevent this kind of childish nonsense that leads to billions of dollars being thrown into the trash.
We the people can no longer tolerate it. We the people can no longer afford it. We the people must take back control and put a stop to this kind of corrupt spending of our hard-earned money.
And we can only do this by staying vigilant, staying informed, teaching others and spreading these messages of truth.
