Congress is required to pass an annual budget. The last time it passed a balanced budget was in 2001. Bill Clinton was President, Newt Gingrich was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the budget was a product of a Republican-controlled Congress’ so-called “Contract With America.” Not only has Congress failed to pass another balanced budget for the last 23 years, but it has also failed to pass any budget at all. Instead, to prevent government shutdowns, it passes eleventh hour omnibus bills, which are nothing more than hundreds of pages of pork barrel spending to fund congressional members’ pet projects, many of which are intended to grease the palms of constituents back home to assure House members of reelection in upcoming elections. As a result, government spending has spiraled out of control, our national debt has soared to a whopping 36 trillion dollars, and our country is hurrying helter-skelter to financial insolvency. All in all, we are literally mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren by recklessly bankrupting our country.

In 2023, Kevin McCarthy was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives on the 15th ballot, after he promised to nix odious omnibus spending bills and return Congress to passing annual budgets through regular order. However, McCarthy reneged on his promise, put forth eleventh hour omnibus spending bills, proved himself a sentinel of the status quo, and continued Congress’ out of control spending spree. Consequently, a few brave Republican souls, outraged over being betrayed by McCarthy, vacated the Speaker’s Chair and threw a spendthrift Congress into utter chaos. Yet, it was not McCarthy who ended up condemned for failing to keep his word, but the few brave souls who kept McCarthy from keeping his Speaker’s gavel. 

After McCarthy’s ouster, Mike Johnson was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, contingent upon his promise to do what McCarthy had promised to do, but failed to do. However, just like McCarthy, Johnson started putting forth eleventh hour omnibus spending bills. Although vehemently opposed by financially responsible Republicans, Johnson’s omnibus spending bills passed, thanks to the support of Democrats, whose far-left priorities were being fully funded by Johnson’s odious omnibuses. Unlike McCarthy, Johnson garnered enough Democrat support, thanks to his doling out of taxpayer dollars to Democrat causes, to prevent his ouster from the Speaker’s Chair, over his betrayal of his own political caucus.

Undoubtedly, feeling emboldened by his Democrat bumper guard, Johnson recently put forth another eleventh hour omnibus spending bill, to prevent a looming government shutdown. This monstrosity was comprised of over 15 hundred pages of unbridled government spending, which would not only increase our astronomical national debt, but would also bring us closer to the brink of bankruptcy. In response to this monstrosity, which among other things, would have given all members of Congress a hefty pay raise, conservative Republicans went ballistic. Representative Victoria Spartz announced that she was withdrawing from the Republican Caucus, because she refused any longer to be a clown in its ongoing circus. Representative Eric Burlison called Johnson’s omnibus “garbage” and Chip Roy, a congressman from Texas, called it “negotiated crap” and a “crap sandwich,” which all members of Congress were being forced to eat. In addition, Roy made the following profound pronouncement about our perilous financial predicament: “As long as you have a blank check, you can’t shrink government and you can’t live free.”

I have no doubt that brave souls like Chip Roy, Victoria Spartz, and Eric Burlison, who’ve been fighting the good fight for years, would have ended up ignored, as well as reviled, if it had not been for Elon Musk stepping in and speaking out against Johnson’s odious omnibus spending bill. According to Musk, any Republican who would vote for such outrageous spending should be voted out of office in 2 years. On the heels of Musk’s diatribe, Donald Trump, who had been curiously silent on Johnson’s odious omnibus spending bill up until then, suddenly came out against it as well, even to the point of demanding unanimous Republican opposition to it. Being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, Mike Johnson quickly pulled his omnibus spending bill from the floor and negotiated a new bill, which, unlike the 1,500 page previous bill, was a mere 160 pages.

No sooner had the new bill been proposed by Johnson than both Trump and Musk came forward to rubber stamp it. However, Chip Roy, much to Trump’s chagrin, came out in no less fiery opposition to the new spending bill than he had been to the previous one, since it too increases our federal deficit by trillions of dollars and includes billions of dollars in unpaid for government spending. According to Roy, just since November’s election, Republicans in Congress, who promised the American people that they would decrease government spending, have actually increased it, as well as increased our national debt by 330 billion dollars. Irate over Chip Roy’s truth-telling, as well as his refusal to kowtow to his wishes and fall in line behind the new shorter version of Johnson’s omnibus spending bill, Donald Trump badmouthed Roy as an “ambitious guy, with no talent,” and called upon talented Texas challengers to run against Roy in 2026.

Now, in light of all of this, all MAGA Americans ought to ask themselves some serious questions. Why is Donald Trump lambasting Chip Roy? Why is Donald Trump calling for Chip Roy to be primaried in 2026? Why is Donald Trump in favor of an omnibus spending bill that increases our national debt by 5 trillion dollars and increases unpaid for government spending by 110 billion dollars? And, most puzzling of all, why did Donald Trump, who is promising to cut government spending, push for Johnson’s shorter omnibus spending bill, which would have suspended the debt ceiling for the first two years of Trump's upcoming presidency? Indeed, Trump has even surprisingly called for the outright elimination of the debt ceiling, which limits how much Congress can borrow, as well as how much deeper it can dig us into debt. If you really want to start scratching your head, then, just remember that during Trump’s first term in the White House, government spending did not decrease at all, but greatly increased, and our national debt grew by 7.8 trillion dollars in just 4 short years.

This incredible saga of our government’s out of control spending continued on Capitol Hill Friday night. After Johnson’s shorter version of his omnibus spending bill went down in flames on Thursday, thanks to 38 Republicans voting against it, despite Trump’s ardent advocacy of it, a government shutdown was averted in the eleventh hour by a duck taped extension of government funding to keep the government temporarily opened into the first of the new year. Once again Congress has kicked the can down the road until tomorrow, because it can’t ever get its financial house in order. Of course, this once again leaves all Americans living in a rickety financial house of cards that could soon collapse upon us, our children, and our grandchildren.