The Garbage That Is the $1.7 Trillion Omnibus Spending Bill

Same story, different day.

Congress wants to pass a trillion-dollar spending package filled with billions of dollars in wasteful spending on pet projects and pork spread all around the country. It’s being undertaken during the “lame duck” session of Congress since the bill, as it stands, wouldn’t have passed a Republican-controlled House.

The bill is expected to pass the House today barring any unforeseen objections.

What’s in this spending package? There are gifts for everyone including helping out Mexican drug cartels by explicitly forbidding a dime of spending to secure our southern border while we send millions to other countries to help them secure theirs. That’s just the surface, however, on this pork-laden trough at which both parties are feeding.

The Daily Wire has a more expanded rundown of all the objectionable items Congress is trying to fund before the chairs are rearranged in January:

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) shared a Twitter thread on what he dubbed “some of the most egregious provisions in the bill.” First on his list was a section outlining requirements of more than $1.5 million geared toward “border management requirements” for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, including a ban on using those funds “to acquire, maintain, or extend border security technology and capabilities, except for technology and capabilities to improve Border Patrol processing.”

Detecting something “fishy,” Bishop noted that the word “salmon” appears 48 times in the bill, which included a $65 million commitment to Pacific coastal salmon recovery. He also found $3 million for bee-friendly highways.

The conservative Heritage Foundation released a list of its own focused on “WOKE PRIORITIES IN THE OMNIBUS,” including several LGBTQ projects and “anti-racism” initiatives.

Among the list of earmarks, the group said, were $1.2 million for “LGBTQIA+ Pride Centers,” $477,000 for the Equity Institute in Rhode Island “to indoctrinate teachers with ‘antiracism virtual labs,’” and $3 million for the American LGBTQ+ Museum.

In addition to nearly $45 billion more aid to Ukraine and NATO allies, the omnibus seeks to fund the creation of a “Ukrainian Independence Park.” Another section would designate a federal building in San Francisco as the “Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building.” There is also a $3.6 million Transportation Department allotment for a “Michelle Obama Trail” in Georgia.

Outgoing Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) got $511 million worth of earmarks in the omnibus, and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), the vice chairman of the Committee on Appropriations who had a major role in drafting the legislation, scored earmarks worth more than $656 million, according to Breitbart News. Shelby also gets an FBI training center renamed after him.

The list is vomit-inducing and both parties are to blame. They know that most or all of these items could never stand debate and scrutiny on their own so they get tucked into a massive spending package where everyone gets a turn at the wheel. In the end, it’s the American taxpayer that loses while Congress pours more money into the bottomless pit of wasteful garbage like $1.2 million for “Pride Centers” or money to rename an FBI training center after one of the bill’s Republican sponsors.

In the end, no one is really shocked or surprised by this behavior since it’s what we’ve all come to expect. The process wouldn’t have changed regardless of whether the red wave had materialized in November, this type of lame duck legislating is a right of passage for an outgoing Congress.

There are a handful of good items in the bill, most of which shouldn’t be attached to a massive government spending package but that’s how Washington works. Sen. Josh Hawley was able to cram in a provision that would ban the download of TikTok on government devices:

TikTok ban: Legislation pushed by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) that would bar the download of the popular app on government devices made it into the final bill. The measure originally passed the Senate unanimously last week and comes as many states have enacted similar TikTok bans on government devices, heeding broad bipartisan concerns about the Chinese-owned app and its reach in the U.S.

TikTok is owned and controlled by a Chinese company which, in turn, makes it owned and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. It’s a popular social media app that many have flagged as an outright security risk yet few in charge have sought to do much about it. That is, until recently when dozens of states started banning the app for state employees, the federal government is now following suit.

In the end, it’s $1.7 trillion in spending of which probably about a few hundred billion was actually necessary for terms of defense and ongoing government operations. The rest is rewards for various groups, funding to rename buildings, and handouts to favored organizations and constituents.