On Monday July 22 Donald Trump and leaders of Congress announced a gargantuan two-year budget deal. It abandons all sanity with respect to debt and bloats military spending beyond the amount requested by the Pentagon. Just three days later, the House of Representatives voted on the $2.7 trillion package which also boosted funding for domestic needs. A majority of Democrats signed off on the grab-bag, as advised by Trump and Nancy Pelosi. To their credit, most House Republicans opposed the deal on fiscal grounds.
I salvaged some consolation from the fact that two of Oregon’s congressional delegates voted against it. Representatives Earl Blumenauer and Kurt Schrader showed that progressives and centrists can agree on the need for better budget oversight. If more reps had broken ranks with the political establishment, this speedy behemoth might have been slowed down enough for a real discussion. Instead delegates fell in line as the media mostly focused on Robert Mueller’s testimony, which leadership had scheduled for the same day.
This deal drives us deeper into the deficit abyss and fails any measure of fiscal responsibility. It “vastly overpays for the Pentagon” according to William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. Writing in Forbes, Hartung says “the agreement sets the table for two of the highest budgets for the Pentagon and related work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy since World War II. The proposed figures are higher than spending at the height of the Vietnam and Korean Wars, and substantially more than the high point of the Reagan buildup of the 1980s.”
Concerns over this splurge were echoed by Stephen Mills, director of the citizens’ group Win Without War. “Under this deal, the Pentagon and its affiliated programs will get $1.48 trillion over the next two years. The entire rest of government, including the Veteran’s Administration by the way, will get $1.30 trillion. That’s $178.6 billion more for the Pentagon than the whole rest of government.”
Given that somber reality, taxpayers should be feeling even more queasy about what happened the day after the budget vote in the House. On Friday, the Supreme Court dropped a fiscal bombshell into the political process, giving lawmakers another reason not to over-fund the Pentagon. By a split vote the Court decided to dismiss Congressional oversight and allow Trump to use our military coffers however he sees fit. Apparently he can divert funds for a border wall even though the allocation wasn’t approved by Congress. Will he be encouraged by this Court decision to further skirt the legislative branch and expand executive power over spending? Given what we’ve observed that seems likely, especially if he wants to buy something expensive for his fans. Assuming construction of the border wall exceeds cost estimates, as many expect, Trump will have more cash to play with now from a department that’s notoriously unaccountable for it’s expenditures. What other goodies will our spender-in-chief want?
It’s interesting how this Court decision was sandwiched between the vote in the Democrat-controlled House and the vote in the Republican-controlled Senate. If the decision had occurred prior to the House vote, fewer Democrats may have supported it. Will Republican Senators be swayed by the decision to embrace the deal when they vote in the coming days? None of the articles I’ve read specify when they’ll vote, and most say passage is expected. This makes their deliberation seem like a housekeeping detail.
Which Senators will support this deal, as instructed by their party leaders? Who will refuse to endorse it as a matter of conscience? Will the budget be a focal point for the Democratic debates, or will those debates simply overshadow budget discussions, just like the Mueller hearings?
There isn’t much practical room for me to hope these days, but I know miracles are possible because I’ve witnessed them in my personal life. Surely they can happen at the national level too. I’m praying a coalition of conservatives and progressives will move us beyond business-as-usual, even though the former seem to love swords more than plowshares, and the latter have yet to show much potential as budget hawks. We can learn.
Please pray with me if you believe good public stewards must be both humane and fiscally responsible. And if you haven’t done so already, contact your legislators and ask them to vote no on this budget deal. Rest assured I’m forwarding this post along with a message to Senators here in Oregon – Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden.
Alas, Sens Merkley and Wyden voted in favor of this budgetary baloney. I received a form letter from Merkley in response to this post, avowing his general concerns about debt. Nothing from Wyden.
One detail in the Senate vote attracted my attention — Sen. Amy Klobuchar voted against it. This makes her the only presidential candidate (Democrat or Republican) who is still in the race at the time of this writing and who is on record as opposing it.
When is Watt going to run for office, hrm?
I ran for a county commission seat once. Lost by 12 votes to the son-in-law of a veteran state legislator. In the immediate wake of that loss I spearheaded a countywide referendum opposing a proposed half-billion-dollar highway. The proposed project was a waste of taxpayer dollars that paralleled an interstate and would have busted apart rural communities. Over 6,000 votes were cast in that referendum. We won by 1 vote. And every state legislator from that district was replaced in subsequent elections.
Being elected to office is a respectable form of public service. It ain’t the only way to make a difference, of course. Citizens do need to encourage each other to become more intimately involved in our collective self-governance. I appreciate all your good efforts to engage with folks, KN. And I’d vote for you.