David Ditch
@DavidADitch
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Fiscal hawk & transportation analyst @Heritage ; tweeted opinions are mine. Fan of struggling causes (limited government & Buffalo Bills). "Like" =/= endorse.
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Congress is back with a spending package to fund the rest of the federal government. This one is 1,012 pages long, plus another 932 pages of "explanatory statements" that contain a lot of the gory details.
MEGATHREAD with gimmicks, earmarks, and a few wins. (1)
The House and Senate have released a 1,050 page spending package. Yet because there are long lists of pork projects and niche special interest carve-outs, there's another 1,281 pages of "explanatory statements".
Ongoing MEGATHREAD of highlights and lowlights (1):
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How large an amount of fraud is enough to be headline news? $100 million? $1 billion?
What about ~$23 billion in fraudulent budget gimmicks?
Congress is considering a roughly $468 billion spending package that includes fake emergency designations (so the spending doesn't count
The House and Senate have released a 1,050 page spending package. Yet because there are long lists of pork projects and niche special interest carve-outs, there's another 1,281 pages of "explanatory statements".
Ongoing MEGATHREAD of highlights and lowlights (1):
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This is the most important chart to understand for America's future, both economically and politically.
The federal budget will go out of control even if we have no wars or recessions for the next 30 years. We felt the consequences of the huge deficit spending spike in 2020:
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The federal government has added $11 trillion in debt over just four years. That's $84,000 for every household in the country.
In comparison, it took 220 years (1789 to 2009) for the debt to reach $11 trillion.
This problem requires serious leadership, but most of Washington
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The House and Senate have released a 1,050 page spending package. Yet because there are long lists of pork projects and niche special interest carve-outs, there's another 1,281 pages of "explanatory statements".
Ongoing MEGATHREAD of highlights and lowlights (1):
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The federal budget is a disaster, with spending growing completely out of control.
The new Biden budget says "hold my ice cream cone," increasing spending by an average 1% of GDP above expected levels. Even with his brutal tax hikes, there would be permanent $1.5 trillion
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America’s hard-earned money is being looted and lit on fire by the government - and Congress isn’t going to change unless it’s forced to.
The problem is spending. Too much welfare for corporations and individuals, too many broken entitlements, too many handouts to incompetent
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Sen. Shaheen is getting $2.5 million for kayaking and slalom facilities in Franklin, NH. Again: in what universe is this an appropriate use of federal tax dollars? (25)
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The federal bureaucracy uses tax dollars to fund the most absurd projects you've ever heard of. Here's $288k to make segregated bird-watching groups because a tiny number of people "feel their voices are not heard" currently.
#DemolishDEI
National Science Foundation grant (2023)
Amount: $288,563
Recipient: Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
Purpose: Co-creation of affinity groups to facilitate diverse & inclusive ornithological societies
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Surging debt and inflationary deficits hurt the economy, but there's much more to it. The federal government is bankrupting America's children.
A child born today has an $82,590 share of the national debt.
By the time he or she turns 18 and can vote, it will be $143,964.
By
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First quarter numbers:
-$509 billion deficit, on pace for $2 trillion this year despite the lack of a hard recession or hot war.
-Interest on the debt up 49% year-over-year. Gross interest payments now higher than military spending.
We need serious spending cuts, NOW.
The federal budget deficit totaled $509 billion in the first quarter of fiscal year 2024, CBO estimates—$87 billion more than the deficit recorded during the same period last fiscal year.
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Sens. Capito and Manchin secured $2.688 million for a bike park in White Sulphur Springs, WV, which is a "city" of around 2,200 people. A location that small doesn't need a big bike park, which is why they aren't paying for it. You are. (27)
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The name of the game for congressional spenders is "what can we get away with" rather than "how can we use the public's money most responsibly." For example: they use "emergency" designations as a budget gimmick to cram more $$$ inside spending caps. (2)
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Last earmark: $1 million to the William Way LGBT center in Philadelphia, via. Sens. Casey and Fetterman and Rep. Boyle.
Does a group funded by (among others) Macy's, TD Charitable Foundation, Merck, NovaCare, Tito's and Urban Outfitters also need a government handout? (28)
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Took 2.5 months to go from $34 trillion to $34.5 trillion in gross federal debt. Running high deficits keeps inflation artificially elevated. Biden has made $700 billion worth of administrative decisions to increase deficits, as I show in my latest research (links below)
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Sens. Schumer and Gillibrand are funneling $1 million to the WE ACT environmentalist group in NYC. These are political activists pushing for more regulation, more spending, "Get out the vote" (we can imagine whose voters they get out), and lots of intersectionalism jargon. (26)
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The dollar has dropped so hard because Washington is pumping artificial cash into the economy. Biden has approved trillions in unnecessary spending, and his administration has taken actions such as college loan "forgiveness" to make deficits worse.
Relative to expectations when
The
@Heritage
Foundation's Public Finance Economist
@RealEJAntoni
delivers a blistering response to Joe Biden's latest dismal inflation report.
Folks, prices are NOT coming down.
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Page 301 of the spending package says that "paragraph(1)(Q)" is emergency spending. Backtrack to page 292 to find out that it's $125 million for security at the RNC/DNC conventions this summer.
Set aside the candidates. Are the conventions a national emergency? (4)
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Page 246. Is there an actual $100 million emergency at the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's procurement department? Not really, but now $100 million of the spending doesn't count towards limits. However, it will count when it's added to the debt. (3)
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The federal government ran a $298 billion deficit in February despite continued solid revenues. That's over $10 billion a day!
More deficit spending means more upward pressure on inflation, and unless Washington does the right thing it will get worse.
The federal budget deficit totaled $830 billion in the first five months of fiscal year 2024, CBO estimates. That amount is $108 billion more than the deficit recorded during the same period last fiscal year.
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P. 352 has the worst gimmick: a $12.44 billion "rescission" (cut) to the Department of Commerce "nonrecurring expense fund". The problem: this is a fake fund that was created as part of last year's debt limit deal. They use this fake cut to claim savings and spend more. (9)
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P. 320-321 set up $450 million in spending on NASA exploration activity as an "emergency".
If there was a genuine national emergency requiring space exploration, it would be major news. This is another gimmick. (5)
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Higher costs for energy and other key inputs has caused 58% inflation for highway construction since the end of 2020.
The badly timed 2021 infrastructure bill is compounding the problem, and the Biden administration is adding wasteful red tape that will inflate costs further.
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It's vital for
@SpeakerJohnson
to push real budget cuts, and there's plenty of targets. ✂️✂️✂️
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The debt went above $23 trillion "for good" on November 7. It exceeded $23.5 trillion on March 16.
That $500 billion debt accumulation in four months was a quick run-up, yet we have now seen another $600 billion in just over three weeks. Much more to come.
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The latest numbers show why so many Americans are unhappy with the economy. Inflation remains elevated, real wages are down, and workers are thousands of dollars behind where they were in January 2021.
This chart represents the main reason why it's going to be hard to dig out:
Here's the CPI🧵 on today's dumpster fire of a report - hint: inflation isn't dead, you're $6,800 poorer b/c of it, and it's poised to get much worse next year...
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Sen. Van Hollen thinks taxpayers should give $500k to the NAACP for its HQ in Baltimore.
Wildly inappropriate handout to a highly partisan political org. Imagine the media coverage if a Republican wanted half a million for the NRA or National Right to Life. (23)
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This shows the gross national debt since the 1940s. Debt is growing much faster than the economy, wages, population, or any other positive metric. Every few years the slope gets steeper.
The estimate of $35.2 trillion in debt by the end of 2024 is probably too low.
Treasury is
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I wrote about this fraudulent bit of swampy accounting in the summer. This should be a scandal. (10)
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The Parade Company makes floats for the Thanksgiving parade in Detroit, so naturally Sen. Shaheen thinks they deserve $3.5 million in corporate welfare.
Reminder that the gross national debt is currently $34.5 trillion. We literally can't afford this nonsense. (24)
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@AlanMCole
Look, we can all agree that the outcome of the Hundred Years War was extremely problematic and it's time to give northern France back to the descendants of King Henry V.
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Sen. Murkowski continues a long tradition of getting big earmarks for tiny, remote locations in Alaska. This time it's a $4 million sewer system upgrade for the "city" of Pelican, population 98. So that's just over $40k per resident. (16)
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To put the amount of bad federal payments in perspective, 18 states have an annual GDP below $236 billion.
WatchBlog post: Federal Government Made $236 billion “Improper Payments” Last Fiscal Year
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P. 324-325 marks $250 million of NASA's "construction and environmental compliance" account as an emergency. For emphasis, this is normal activity that they're classifying as an emergency so it doesn't count for budgetary purposes. (6)
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In the wee hours of the morning, Senate leadership delivered 4155 pages of unfiltered swamp called an Omnibus, concluding with authorization of a Continuous Plankton Recorder.
Ongoing omnibus thread on the 2023 Omnibus:
(1/x)
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P. 767 and 818 have a combined $8 billion in emergency funding gimmickry to hide the cost of housing welfare programs. Again, not new money, but hiding the money so it doesn't count against spending caps. (12)
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Sen. Baldwin also got an earmark to buy a solar energy system for Viola, WI. Unfortunately, it's located in a low-sunlight part of the country, so the value probably won't be worth the cost. (15)
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P. 344 has a gimmick that's almost entirely obscured. The Crime Victims Fund (first highlight) has a balance, and when Congress only uses part of the balance it claims the rest as "savings". The current balance isn't publicly available, so only a few people in Congress know the
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P. 330 is more of the same: all $234 million of the National Science Foundation's "research equipment and facilities construction" account becomes an emergency. (7)
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P. 651 has a $350 million cut to the Indian Health Service. The funds were created in a 2022 Democrat-only spending package, which is rapidly becoming a huge slush fund for political convenience. (11)
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Federal taxpayers are defrauded to the tune of $233-$521 billion every year.
Congress has passed a few laws intended to crack down on it but hasn't tried the one thing that might actually work: fewer handouts and less spending.
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The federal government isn’t passively allowing massive waves of illegal border crossings, they are SUBSIDIZING IT with tax dollars.
For example, here the CDC funds an NGO to provide healthcare to migrants who are on their way to the border.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant (2023)
Amount: $1,173,375
Recipient: International Organization For Migration
Purpose: Sustaining expansion of the overseas health assessment and management of the United States bound migrants
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There's a 306 page .pdf file of earmarks for just the Transportation-HUD bill, most of which flow from the Community Development Fund. The CDF is a $6.7 billion slush fund for local pork and should be eliminated ASAP. (19)
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Senators Capito and Machin got a $10 million wastewater project for West Union, WV, population 653. That's over $15k per resident. (17)
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The Acer Access and Development program is a perfect example of federal excess, subsidizing maple syrup. This isn't needed in normal times and is unacceptably wasteful in today's budget environment. It's located in backup documents. (18)
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Next up are earmarks, located in supporting documents.
The Ojibwe are a Native American group living in northern MN/WI and southern Canada. Sen. Baldwin thinks we should spend $5 million on a "revitalization center" for the Ojibwe language institute. (14)
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Senators Collins and King got a $1 million earmark for a "workforce transportation" study in Bath, Maine. I broke down the many flaws with this item a few months back. (20)
Reviewing the approved earmarks in this year's Senate Transportation/HUD bill and only made it three items in before I found a ridiculous boondoggle. The amount of policy failure bundled into this single $1 million item is wild. Let me break it down:
(1)
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Sen. Schatz got $9.5 million for a mass transit baseyard in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. The state of Hawaii has dysfunctional public transit even by the standard of other dysfunctional transit service in America. Sending good money after bad. (22)
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Some additional resources...
The $7.5 trillion spending spree that gave us inflation:
Defunding academia is a good place to start cutting spending:
People are counting on Social Security, but it's a house of cards:
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One of the few bright spots is a big cut to the extremely dysfunctional "superfund" account, saving $745 million from last year's level. Left image is for 2023, right image is for 2024. (13)
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Members pushing for the SALT change claim it’s “tax relief". In reality, it encourages high-income households to stay in high-tax states like CA, IL and NY, rather than move to FL/TX. It means the rest of the country subsidizes those wasteful and corrupt state governments.
Top 10 states for SALT deduction per filer claiming the deduction:
1. Connecticut
2. New York
3. New Jersey
4. Massachusetts
5. California
6. Illinois
7. Maryland
8. Oregon
9. District of Columbia
10. Rhode Island
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Today, Senators are looking at hiring an army of IRS agents. If you think the coming avalanche of audits would only hit the top 1%, think again.
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@EricBoehm87
Someday one of these state food maps will not be fake. But this is not that day.
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Workplace DEI trainings are disruptive / "lead to discord" and it's hard to measure their effectiveness. A company got the National Science Foundation to hand them tax dollars for an A.I. agent to produce "bias-free" DEI training.
#DemolishDEI
National Science Foundation grant (2023)
Amount: $294,880
Recipient: Culturally Responsive Solutions, LLC
Purpose: Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform for evaluating and developing cultural competence and diversity, equity and inclusion awareness for use within the
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@mkhammer
This is where the IRS focuses audits. Does this look like a map of billionaires to anyone?
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Biden wants to blame inflation on businesses. This is a tired and failed attempt to avoid the truth: his policies have driven up inflationary deficit spending compared to expectations when he entered the White House.
#SOTU
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@jessesingal
Broad economic sanctions affect Russia's ability to wage war. Expelling Russian students has no effect on the ability to wage war and could arguably improve it by sending military-age males back.
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I realize there’s a lot going on, but the $3.5 trillion package IS 👏 NOT 👏 INFRASTRUCTURE
Sinema dashes House Dems' hopes for $3.5T infrastructure bill
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It took 26 days for the national debt to go from $32 trillion to $32.5 trillion.
Meanwhile, House conservatives are routinely called terrorists for daring to call for fiscal responsibility, while members who rubber-stamp bloated spending bills are "moderate".
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@GeneralThoughts
@Mike_Palicz
This is specifically is referencing liquor stores, and the idea that liquor is more essential than something explicitly protected by the 1st amendment.
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🚨Omnibus thread about what's in the 2,741 page omnibus spending bill as I read it 🚨 (1/x)
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🚨New report🚨 highlighting the Biden Administration's malfeasance on a wide variety of issues:
-Cramming leftist dogma into every possible program regardless of what Congress authorized.
-A blizzard of taxpayer-funded grants that promote radical ideologies. (1)
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Communists across the country are literally calling for holy war and genocide, usually with the encouragement/guidance of faculty.
The American people shouldn’t be forced to subsidize this.
“There’s only one solution, intifada revolution. We must have a revolution so we can have a socialist reconstruction of the United States of America.”
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The amount of confusion about what the debt limit deal means for debt and spending, even though we've had the text for almost 2 days, says a lot about how it's drafted. There's gamesmanship to try and provide plausible deniability to both D and R leadership. Examples:
(1/7)
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A year ago, Sen. Manchin started pushing back against the left's attempt to railroad through a huge tax-and-spend bill. His reasoning, focused on inflation and the national debt, was sound. And he has completely abandoned it over the last two weeks.🧵 (1/6)
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Just dropped a 🚨new report🚨 on how Biden has created over $700 billion of inflationary deficits through administrative choices, top of trillions of dollars from legislation he's signed. Hard for inflation to die down when they keep pouring gasoline on the fire.
Link in reply.
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It has been impossible to avoid the flood of misinformation regarding
@USPS
in recent weeks. I debunk 10 postal myths
@DailySignal
:
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The federal government spends far more on healthcare than defense, and health spending is surging.
There's a debate to be had about how best to use public resources on defense, but the idea that we shortchange domestic spending for defense is complete nonsense.
"I hope my tax dollars go to a good cause, like curing cancer"
Lockheed Martin:
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"Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value" - Joe Biden
Counts from today's main budget document
equity (social justice): 56
climate change: 35
fair share: 23
gender: 22
environmental justice: 18
diversity: 10
balance/balancing (budget
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Opposition to this sort of backroom, no-ability-to-read-or-amend, debt-hiking governance will be portrayed as radical. That is exactly backwards. The American people’s representatives deserve an opportunity to properly consider important legislation. (2/x)
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There’s no polite way to say it: this is a complete and utter fabrication, and frankly a bizarre one. Note the complete lack of specifics. There isn’t a proposal or even a random utterance that can be spun to make this anything other than misinformation.
MAGA House Republican proposals would slash funding for border security – a move that could allow nearly 900 pounds of fentanyl into our country.
We need more resources to secure the border. Not less.
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Hat tip to
@Oilfield_Rando
for creating the
@RandoLand_us
account, which was the source for most of the grants I skewered.
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Ideally, U.S. foreign policy should start with not giving resources to terrorists.
-Iran is the top backer of Hamas; Biden gives sanctions relief.
-The U.N.'s "relief" agency is a Hamas puppet; Biden gives them hundreds of millions per year, undoing a Trump cut.
-Biden wants a
BREAKING: Biden Admin Renews Iran Sanctions Waiver Unlocking Upwards of $10 Billion for Regime -- In face of GOP outrage, State Dept again issues key sanctions waiver permitting Tehran access to frozen funds
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Seeing a lot of complaints about "minority rule" and the supposed need for changing the Senate and/or the Supreme Court because Dems aren't able to get everything they want from the federal government. Thread on some important and rarely articulated concepts at play. (1/x)
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@jessesingal
Literally every reply is "sending you love for your courageous decision (heart emoji)", no acknowledgement of what happened to her. Deeply Orwellian.
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Rubber-stamping this legislative dog’s breakfast is a dereliction of duty. This is closer to oligarchy than how our democratic republic is supposed to operate. We must do better than this.
Now, onto the contents. (3/x)
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I know we're supposed to shrug at politicians making stuff up, but Biden constantly claiming credit for deficit reduction is WILD.
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Last year's obscenely bloated omnibus spending bill is a big source of discontent among House conservatives. Since the spending debate is only just beginning, I'm going to highlight 23 of the worst FY 2023 earmarks over the next several weeks. MEGATHREAD: (1/x)
In the wee hours of the morning, Senate leadership delivered 4155 pages of unfiltered swamp called an Omnibus, concluding with authorization of a Continuous Plankton Recorder.
Ongoing omnibus thread on the 2023 Omnibus:
(1/x)
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$32 trillion in debt, or over $245,000 for every household in the country.
There's no end in sight to unsustainably high deficits and most leaders in both parties are ignoring the drivers of spending growth.
Washington is squandering America's hard-earned prosperity.
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Absurd utopianism. The only way to actually accomplish this would be to mandate all vehicles have a speed limiter at around 10mph.
While reducing deaths is a worthy goal in general, "Vision Zero" is part of an agenda to force people to drive less.
The only acceptable number of traffic deaths is zero.
Our National Roadway Safety Strategy moves us in that direction, and dozens of companies, organizations, and local DOTs have taken up our call to action.
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@christianbrits
Genuinely wonder what this type of anti-development environmentalist thinks the alternative to densification is. At least with nuclear energy they're wrong but have alternatives to point to.
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@Orbitaldropkick
Props to this guy for calling it:
@cgrawert
@Orbitaldropkick
This is only the eight finger technique, ki rata had to save something for nine and ten
Nine Point Technique (Go Time Within Triple Stopped Time): 100,000 Annihilating Full-Body Head Butts Focused On Enemy Balls Only
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Worth noting that
@Heritage
has long called for privatizing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. NPR and PBS have established audiences and can survive without taxpayer help.
We shouldn't be forced to subsidize left-wing activism.
#DefundNPR
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FACT: We're on track to have a $38.5 trillion national debt by 2026, roughly $300k per household.
FACT: We’re on track to build 500,000 public vehicle chargers by 2026.
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I don't use the word "socialist" as often as most conservatives, but I did so in this piece. Heavily socializing many sectors of the economy and paying for it with taxes on businesses is a soft version of seizing the means of production and would make us poorer.
The so-called “infrastructure plan” is being used as a Trojan horse to hide a socialist agenda that would add trillions to the debt, hike taxes, and centralize federal power
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NOTHING IS FREE, EVER. If a politician takes credit for the government doing something, your first thoughts should be "how much did it cost" and "how was it paid for".
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Regardless of the bill’s merit/flaws, this is textbook media bias.
🧵THREAD🧵
The corporate press has gone from reporting on Florida’s parental rights legislation to advocating against it in the blink of an eye.
I break it down for
@FreeBeacon
, with a few callouts below.⤵️
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Biden taking credit for "record deficit reduction" is malarkey. Last year, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that Biden's choices have added $2.77 trillion to near-term deficits. A ham sandwich in the Oval Office would have done better.
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"We cut K-12 funding" has been an article of faith on the left for decades with no basis in reality. It deflects blame from the reality of failed government-run school systems in so much of the country.
Rep. Jahana Hayes (D): We have "disinvested in schools for the last 30 years"
This is a lie,
@RepJahanaHayes
.
Inflation-adjusted education spending per student:
1960: $4,521
1970: $7,130
1980: $9,048
1990: $12,320
2000: $14,308
2010: $16,962
2020: $18,183
302% real increase.
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