No, that isn’t hyperbole. It’s just the latest headline from Captain Obvious.
Millennials and future generations are being saddled with unfathomable debt at an extraordinary rate and neither party in Congress seems to care much. Last week, the House considered two different appropriations bills—the FY2019 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies bill and the FY2019 Financial Services and General Government bill.
Both of these bills represent smaller components of the larger $1.3 trillion omnibus bill that the GOP-controlled Congress passed and the president signed back in March. The funding levels for the omnibus were agreed to following a bipartisan budget agreement to “lift” the previous budget caps by roughly $300 billion. This spending binge, when combined with a major tax cut without commensurate spending cuts or loophole closures, means America is once again spiraling toward $1 trillion deficits in 2019 if things don’t turn around.
The floor debate in the House last week provided Congress with the ability to do just that.
And being serious adults concerned with the economic future they hand off to their children and grandchildren, they obviously stepped up to the plate, looked at the overall fiscal outlook, and finally came to the rational conclusion that they had to start cutting spending and government growth, right?
Well, looking at the Interior and Environment bill, the Congresscritters did actually file a slew of amendments. So that’s reassuring. And one of those amendments is to scale back the NEA/NEH funding that we wrote about a few weeks ago! Nice. The amendment would cut $23.5 million to a program that shouldn’t even exist, so I’m sure it easily…easily…oh.
It failed. By a lot.
Well, I’m sure some amendments passed that improved our overall fiscal outlook. Like this really solid one that would prohibit funding to the Office of Environmental Justice—another program that shouldn’t exist at the federal level.
With so many serious adults concerned about the country’s fiscal state, that one had to have pa…had to have…well.
It failed too.
It’s encouraging to see a Congress run by the fiscally “responsible” party really making the most of its majority. But hey—they did at least shift over $100 million of funds around without so much as a roll call vote in what is tantamount to earmarks for pet programs.
In fact, not a single amendment passed—either by voice or roll call—that reduced overall spending in the Interior appropriations bill.
So, we’ve got that going for us. Along with a likely future rife with crippling debt and poverty.
I suppose that’s something to look forward to as well.
