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Opinion

Taxpayers feel the pain of politicians’ wasteful and absurd $1.7 trillion spending plan

By
James Bovard
Published Dec. 21, 2022
Updated Dec. 21, 2022, 10:59 p.m. ET
Nancy Pelosi
The massive spending bill even calls for a monument to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. AP

Congress will soon vote on the 4,155-page omnibus bill that was crafted in a back room by half a dozen congressional leaders. No amendments will be permitted on the House or Senate floors and members of Congress will get no time to read the bill before rubber-stamping $1.7 trillion-plus in new spending. 

Here are a few gems from this “No Boondoggle Left Behind” blunderbuss: 

  • “Monuments to Me” in the bill commemorate politicians’ generosity with other people’s money — including the “Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building” in San Francisco and the “Nancy Pelosi Fellowship Program” for the State Department. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) finagled his name onto the Patrick Leahy Lake Champlain Basin Program. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) also got his name on an FBI training facility even though “almost everything in Alabama is already named after him,” according to Scott Parkinson of the Club for Growth. 
  • $3.6 million for the Michelle Obama Trail in DeKalb, Ga. Perhaps the four-mile trail will be a consolation prize for Michelle after her signature “Let’s Move” campaign dismally failed to end childhood obesity. 
  • The omnibus bill authorizes a chauffeur for the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. But there is no relief for taxpayers who get run over by IRS agents racing to meet quotas for seizing citizens’ paychecks and bank accounts. 
  • The bill includes an earmark of $2 million for the office of New York City Mayor Eric Adams “for improving coordination between social agencies to support children and families.” Is a federal bribe necessary for local government agencies to exchange emails?
Make up
The bill also empowers the Food and Drug Administration over cosmetics. Getty Images
Michelle Obama
A hiking trail named after former first lady Michelle Obama will also get funding from the bill. Getty Images for Live Nation
  • $200 billion is budgeted for the Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund, part of President Biden’s glorious worldwide crusade for the rights of females. Will that program include sending condolence cards to the women of Afghanistan? Or maybe all the money will be fizzled for zany projects like “Women’s Economic Empowerment through Gender Sensitive Value Chain ­Interventions” in Albania. 
  • The bill grants Food and Drug Administration agents sweeping new power over cosmetics. How long until the FDA causes shortages of lipstick and mascara like it did with infant formula? 
  • The bill provides massive subsidies to encourage the continuing tidal wave of illegal immigration while banning spending any funds “to construct border fencing in certain areas,” according to the Heritage Foundation. While scoffing at safeguarding the US border, Congress is sending $410 million for “enhanced border security” to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Oman, according to Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC). 
Anthony Fauci
There’s even funding for a history project on COVID-19, which likely won’t include Dr. Anthony Fauci and the CDC’s browbeating of Twitter to silence critics. Getty Images
  • $7.5 million is authorized for “research targeted toward developing a better understanding of the domestic radicalization phenomenon, and advancing evidence-based strategies for effective intervention and prevention.” The feds will “research radicalization” in lieu of ceasing to rile up people by trampling the Constitution.
  • Congress is dolloping out $1.5 million for the COVID-19 American History Project. That program is more likely to have rows of Anthony Fauci Bobbleheads than to include the sordid details of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health browbeating Twitter to censor critics who exposed the deceits of federal policymakers. 
  • To fill the fearmongering void caused by Fauci’s retirement, the omnibus bill creates a new White House pandemic czar. 

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) aptly describes the omnibus bill as “an act of legislative barbarism.” ­Unfortunately, such barbarism is standard procedure inside the Beltway. The omnibus debacle is another step toward turning taxpayers into nothing more than beasts of burden for grandstanding politicians.