Washington, D.C. – The Democrats' main objective is to spend money. It's the glue that holds the groups that put them into office together. Everyone who helps them gets a piece. Everyone who gets in the way gets run over.
The worst part of all, though, is the inability to hold those responsible for allowing this to continue year after year, decade after decade, accountable for their abuse not just of the process but the law. The way the Democrats spend to keep alive a system of spoils that keeps them in power undermines both the democratic process and the rule of law.
Doubt me? Try reading the landmark 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974. In it, the Democrats set down a plan for spending that is devoid, not just of common sense but of virtually any mechanism to put a brake on how the federal government spends money.
It's led to a mess, especially since the Reagan years when the Democrats in the House, led by then-Speaker Thomas P. ‘Tip' O'Neill, Jr., threw the requirements of the Budget Act out the window. It's all been downhill since then, as one provision of the act after another has been discarded.
According to the federal budget law, the Biden FY2024 budget plan should have been delivered to Capitol Hill no later than February 6, 2023. It wasn't – maybe because the president was too busy traveling the United States telling lies about GOP intentions regarding Social Security and Medicare to make sure his staff met the deadline. So far, the White House hasn't even sent a “save the date” card to let Congress know when to expect it.
That doesn't sit well with Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall or Georgia GOP Congressman Buddy Carter, who introduced on February 7 two bills intended to put teeth in the deadlines established by the budget act regarding the submission of the president's budget.
The first, the Presidential Accountability for Yearly Submission of the United States' Budget Act – which Marshall and Carter are calling the “Paystub Act” – requires that all political appointees' salary payments be withheld until the presidential budget is submitted. The second, the Presidential Budget Accountability Act, withholds the funds needed to pay for presidential travel, official entertainment and other expense account items if the president fails to submit a timely budget to Congress.
Neither act would apply until 2025, but both hit home hard on the point that the deadlines established by a prior Congress in prior legislation are not advisory. They are the law.
“Disregard for the budget submission deadline is part of a larger culture of disrespect for our nation's laws coming from the Oval Office,” Marshall said in a release announcing the introduction of the two bills. “Presidents need to be held accountable for seemingly forgetting or just not caring about timely budget submissions, or else the American people will continue to see their elected officials left out of important funding discussions and forced to vote on massive, last-minute Omnibus spending packages like we saw last December.”
Indeed, that image of late-night big dollar deals crafted inside the U.S. Capitol without the input of the American people or most members of Congress, as described by Marshall, seems more and more to be the rule rather than the exception.
Carter was equally severe in his criticism of the way Congress and the White House have ignored the laws governing the federal budgetary process.
“Without an enforcement mechanism in place, budget deadlines are mere suggestions. Like households and businesses across the country, the United States government cannot function properly without a budget – look no further than the $31 trillion in national debt for proof,” Carter said.
The proposals he and Marshall put forward, he added, would “send a message to the American people that balancing the budget is our top priority.”
As a tool for fighting inflation, which the national polls all say is at or near the top of the concerns of most American votes, balancing the budget would do a lot. Inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods, something the Biden-era COVID relief and alleged inflation-fighting measures both facilitated to the tune of trillions.
Even former Obama economist Jason Furman agrees. Speaking on CNBC, he debunked Biden's talking points on inflation: “Nothing in this number gives me comfort,” he said. “This inflation issue is real. I don't think it is going away anytime soon, and I think anyone who is overly calm about it is making me nervous.”
Whether he includes Biden – whose Tuesday statement about the CPI was eerily cheerful – among those he considers overly calm isn't clear.
What is clear is that the economy is headed into another rough patch, meaning Marshall and Carter may have tapped into something, especially since, year over year, the growth in real wages is down into negative territory for the 22nd straight month.
“With government spending out of control, persistent inflation, and interest rates on the rise, we need to return to a responsible budgeting process now more than ever. It is up to Presidents – both current and future – to initiate the budget process on time by letting Congress know where their administration's spending priorities lie,” Marshall said.
The Biden administration holds the record for the latest submission of a presidential budget in modern history. Nevertheless, with the Democrats in charge of the Senate, even a simple and direct bill like the PAYSTUB Act is unlikely to go anywhere. It's not that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is afraid of embarrassing the White House, which is what passing this bill would do. No, Schumer is afraid of antagonizing the federal workforce who, even though they are not covered by the provisions of the act because they are not appointees, could interpret it as the leading wedge of a campaign to hold all federal workers accountable for their performance on the job. That's not something their unions – which are among the most generous contributors to the Democrat's national political machine – could allow, even if most government workers are dedicated, hard-working guardians of the public's interest. The bad apples that do exist, and they do, have made the barrel an easy target at a time when the populist impulse among the American electorate runs strong. Still, even if it doesn't pass, the Marshall-Carter plan is a good first step toward the recognition that the budget process doesn't work because it's designed to be unworkable and unenforceable and needs to be replaced by something that priorities thrift and growth over profligacy and pelf.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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