10 things I hate about the budget deal

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed the budget bill by a vote of 309-118. You can see the roll-call vote here.

The bill is now in the Senate. Campaign for Liberty members should call their Senators and tell them to vote against the bill.

The bill spends 1.7 trillion dollars and increases spending and debt. If that is not enough reason for Senators to vote no, here are ten specific items in the bill:

1. $100 million on efforts prevent Russia’s interference in European elections (because it’s only ok to interfere in another country’s elections when the U.S. does it?)

2.  $125 million to build a new “Purple” Line on the D.C. Metro — spending money to build a new line when Metro has not fixed its existing problems does not seem like a good use of money. But a lot of important lobbyists and government contractors live on the Purple line — not to mention bureaucrats and staffers.

3. $17 million for Energy Efficiency And Renewable Energy spending.

4. $24 million for Department of Energy Office of Science.

5. A $295 million bailout for  Puerto Rico’s Medicaid program.

6.$76.5 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding. This is the slush fund where Congress hides increases in Defense spending.

7. $82 million increase in foreign aid budget.

8. The bill provides “not less” than $1.28 billion for assistance for Jordan.

9, $23 million increase for the Drug Enforcement Agency.

10. $50 million for the programs to address the opioid “crisis.”

Senator Rand Paul blasted the deal in an article in Breitbart News:

Looking at all the smiling faces on the other side of the aisle, I have to ask: are Democrats still the minority party?

You would be tempted to think the $1 trillion government funding deal is like Christmas morning for them, as Republicans have handed them free media to brag about how much of the President’s agenda they have stopped.

You’ll see it in the news as an “Omnibus spending bill,” when it should really be called “the Status Quo Protection Act.” President Hillary Clinton would have been proud of this bill.

It tosses out campaign promises as it continues to fund the military industrial complex and the welfare state.

It not only rejects President Trump’s calls for cuts to multiple agencies, but it increases their funding by millions of dollars.

It paves the way for those agencies to engage in more “use it or lose it” September spending.

It leaves our deficit at well over $500 billion.

While good provisions are tucked in, “verall,” as Bloomberg reported, “the compromise resembles more of an Obama administration-era spending bill than a Trump one.”

Instead of legislating from crisis to crisis, Republicans should use fiscal deadlines to articulate the principles that supposedly set us apart – to boldly defend the conservative philosophy that fueled the country’s growth and can lead it into a new era of prosperity.

Yet, for too long, Republican majorities have backed down from those debates. Like Monty Python’s Sir Robin, they have turned and fled from what seems the least bit threatening, with no shortage of people willing to sing their praises for “bravely” doing so.

As a result, we’ve allowed a narrative that equates “compassion with money” to dominate. If you don’t want to increase funding levels, you’re painted as not caring about the underlying issue.

Read the rest of the piece here.

For more on the budget see Michael Tanner and Tim Carney.

Also watch Campaign for Liberty Chaiman Ron Paul discuss the budget deal on the Ron Paul Liberty Report here.