Venal Congressional Leaders Slip One Past the Goalie

U.S. Capitol Police officers stand at the base of the steps to the House Chambers as the House votes on a $1.7 trillion spending package, in Washington DC, on December 23, 2022. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

While most Americans were busy preparing for holidays with family and friends, the retiring leaders of the Senate and House spent their final days before Christmas wrangling through Congress the $1.7 trillion Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023. With the clock ticking on a government shutdown, the Democratic Party majorities in each chamber used the holidays and looming threat of paralysis to ramrod through a pork-laden and ideologically driven spending package in a last-minute process that undermined normal congressional budget procedures.

More commonly known as the Omnibus spending package, this monstrosity reminds us that we are in a war for the very soul of America. If that statement seems hyperbolic, consider a few of the most egregious items in the Act:

Defense Spending

The Act approved $858 billion in defense spending, an increase of 14.4 percent from last year. This is more than 3.5 times China what spends, and in fact an amount greater than the next ten countries combined. The United States spends over 40 percent of the world’s total defense spending, yet somehow can’t manage to recruit enough able-bodied new soldiers or keep those it has adequately trained or motivated. Instead, U.S. military personnel are being indoctrinated with leftist ideology and gender insanity, substantially undermining our nation’s warfaring capabilities.