I don’t know if I even have the words to express how disgusted I am with the omnibus spending bill that was just rushed through Congress. Members of the House of Representatives were given less than 24 hours to read this 2,232 page monstrosity of a bill before they were expected to vote on it, and so obviously nobody was able to read the entire thing before the vote was held. This is the kind of thing that Democrats were greatly criticized for in the past, but now it is Republicans that are doing it. The Republican Party is supposed to stand for limited government, and this is yet another example that shows how badly broken the system in Washington has become.
I am running for Congress in Idaho’s first congressional district, and I want to make it exceedingly clear that I would have voted against this bill. In addition to fully funding Planned Parenthood, this bill also funds a whole host of other liberal priorities. But other than an increase in military spending, conservative priorities are almost entirely ignored by this bill.
Over the past decade, we have been adding more than a trillion dollars a year to the national debt, and this omnibus spending bill dramatically increases government spending at a time when we should be desperately trying to get our financial house in order.
On Twitter, Rand Paul documented just a few of the examples of the tremendous waste in this bill…
o $12m for Scholarships for Lebanon
o $20m for Middle East Partnership Initiative Scholarship Program
o $12m in military funding for Vietnam
o $3.5m in nutrition assistance to Laos
o $15m in Developmental assistance to China
o $10m for Women LEOs in Afghanistan
o $1m for the World Meteorological Organization
o $218m for Promoting Democracy Development in Europe
o $10m for disadvantaged Egyptian Students
o $1.371bn for Contributions to International Organizations
o $51m to promote International Family Planning and Reproductive Health
o $7m promoting International Conservation
o $10m for UN Environmental Programs
o $5m for Vietnam Education Foundation Grants
o $2.579m for Commission on Security and Co-operation in Europe
o $15m to USAID for promoting international higher education between universities
o $1m for the Cultural Antiquities Task Force
o $6.25m for the Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation
o $20m for Countering Foreign State Propaganda
o $12m for Countering State Disinformation and Pressure
After it passed, Democratic leaders were jubilant. The following comes from the American Mirror…
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and her esteemed counterpart in the Senate, Sen. Chuck Schumer, are declaring the spending bill rushed through by Republicans this week as “a victory.”
“The distinguished leader has clearly put forth many of the priorities that we’re very proud of in a bill that’s one yard high,” Pelosi said of House Speaker Paul Ryan at a joint press conference with Schumer on Thursday.
Senator Schumer also admitted that the Democrats got more accomplished in this bill than they did during any of the spending bills when Barack Obama was in the White House, and Nancy Pelosi added that Republican leadership rushed this legislation through so quickly because “they didn’t want their colleagues to see what was in the bill.”
What we have in Washington D.C. today doesn’t look anything like what our founders originally intended. It is time to take our government back, and we need fresh leadership in Washington.
I am not going to Washington to be a cog in the system. Rather, I am going to Washington to drain the swamp and to turn the current corrupt system completely upside down. If you would like to learn more about what we are trying to do, please visit MichaelSnyderForCongress.com.
Michael Snyder is a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District. If you would like to help him win on May 15th, you can donate online, by Paypal or by sending a check made out to “Michael Snyder for Congress” to P.O. Box 1136 – Bonners Ferry, ID 83805. To learn more, please visit MichaelSnyderForCongress.com.