December 6 – The United States House of Representatives and Senate are looking at possibly passing a huge spending bill at the end of the session this year to avoid a government shut down.
The bill includes $45 billion in additional defense spending. That’s on top of a whole lot of other spending the Biden administration has asked for.
The bill would pay the budget through 10 months of 2023.
Michele Jansen of NewsTalk 103.7FM said, “With seemingly some Republicans aiding and abetting some of the goodies that Democrats want in these bills. I’m confused because we have McConnell who is in the minority in the Senate, granted, seeming to want to go along with this and then we have McCarthy who is presumably going to be the next speaker who I’m getting mixed messages from. I’ve heard that he does support this and then last night on a Fox News show he said no he doesn’t and that would be shortchanging your power. Who’s really supporting this?”
Congressman John Joyce said, “Let me make my message abundantly clear. What we need right now is to put a Republican majority in charge of government funding. Mitch McConnell and his lack of leadership in the Senate is not the answer. The Democrats are going to try to offset their skyrocketing inflation with a massive spending increase. That is not the answer. You sent me to Washington. You said, look Doc, we want you in Washington to be a responsible steward of the taxpayer’s dollars and reckless spending is not the answer. Let’s wait. It’s just a matter of weeks until we are in control. Let’s do a short continuing resolution to allow funding to continue until Republicans with responsible ideas can step up and fund the government in the manner that you sent me to Washington to do.”
Jansen wondered, “Will there be enough Republicans putting the pressure back on this to push back? Will leader McCarthy, will he step up and try to prevent, we really should be doing a continuing resolution in my opinion that’ll only take us to January when you guys come into power. He (McCarthy) says he doesn’t want all these issues shoved into a big bill – that he wants separate bills on these important things like the border and discussion about things like what we’re doing with journalism. Why wouldn’t they press for only limiting the spending until January?”
Joyce said, “A continuing resolution is the answer to get us to January – to be the responsible stewards of the taxpayer’s dollars and then allow us to address issue by issue as appropriate and not ramming those into an omnibus. We have to be able to fund the government. Keep the lights on through January and then look at this in a thoughtful manner, in a fiscally responsible manner. This is going to be the answer. This is what I will advocate for.”
With the cost of heating oil and gas, to throw more spending on top of it seems a little bit worrisome. When you add the money that has been spent on Ukraine, it really starts to add up.
Joyce said, “I absolutely think we need to have the oversight to see where the resources are going (in Ukraine). I think that as we move into leadership, we need to have many oversight hearings and evaluations. We need to look at the past and future. We need to look at what happened and how COVID was unleashed on the world from China. We need to look at gain of function from the NIH research that continues to occur on viruses. That is when we sit down and talk on the Oversight Subcommittee in Energy and Commerce. That’s where we need to be. We need to have the ability to look and see where our funds have come from, where our funds are going and how we can responsibly manage those resources.”
It’s also possible the additional 87,000 IRS agents may be added into the omnibus bill.
Jansen pointed out, “That was a huge promise. Please get the House back for the GOP and we will make sure that that funding doesn’t happen so that middle class people won’t be gone after because we know that’s a fact, but the Biden administration even emphasized how the smaller guy might be gone after by insisting they’re going to really crack down on these $600 transactions by third parties. I can imagine these abundant IRS agents going after people. Remember nobody would be affected under $400,000? Now a $600 transaction could trigger a looksee from the IRS? How do you keep that promise of defunding if we do an omnibus bill?”
Joyce said, “Ramming that through at the last minute is not the answer. First of all, I voted against this 87,000 additional IRS agents because I knew it was going to affect small businesses. I knew it was going to not affect the big corporations who have layers of accountants to protect them. It was going to affect the sole proprietors. It was going to affect the LLCs. The small businesses that keep our country moving forward and 87,000 additional IRS agents is not the way to do that. We need a separate bill that totally eradicates these additional 87,000 IRS agents. Where we need to be putting additional people are on the border. What we need to be doing is ramping up the number of border patrol agents to protect our southern border, to protect the sovereignty of our country, to stop the flow of fentanyl and it’s analogs into our country which are killing our neighbors, our children, our friends, we’ve seen this. And what are we doing? The Democrats have put forth additional IRS agents? This hinges on being absurd. It is not looking at what a responsible government should be looking for to do. I will vote not to fund those additional IRS agents.”
