On Wednesday, The Federalist posted an article about the federal budget discussions. Personally, I am not opposed to a government shutdown. During the rather drawn-out election of Kevin McCarthy, one of the things that was discussed (and I thought agreed to) was a return to the budget process requiring individual votes on the 12 appropriations bills that make up what’s known as the “omnibus package. This supposedly would be the end of the omnibus packages and the threat of government shutdowns.
On March 10, 2022, I posted the following:
Someone asked the website Quora when the last federal budget was passed using the conventional budget process.
The website posted the following answer:
Usually a President’s first year in Office is under the previous President’s budget. However knowing that Barack Obama was winning, the Congressional Democrats used Continuing Resolution to push the budget forward. With Obama in Office, they passed the full budget in April 2009. I think since then we have only operated in a world of continuing resolutions and an omnibus budget. After gaining the control of the congress in 2014, Republican promised to return to regular order and it hasn’t happened yet.
To answer your question, the 2007–08 budget was probably the last regular budget passed.
The Federalist reports:
While we gleefully await the federal government’s bankruptcy at the end of the month, here’s my favorite Elon Musk quote: “What did you get done this week?”
Every Republican in Congress should have to answer that question to the American taxpayer (you and me) before even thinking about giving another cent to Ukraine, the Pentagon, the DOJ, Health and Human Services, and every other department that is, at best, useless, and at worst, packed with paper pushers overtly harassing the people who pay their outsized salaries (you and me).
The Musk quote came in a strikingly similar context. In a text chat, some overpaid Twitter executive lectured him about the “internal distraction” that Musk’s public comments about the company had made after he purchased a large portion of its shares. “Next time we speak, I’d like to provide you perspective on the level of internal distraction right now and how it [sic] hurting our ability to do work,” the executive said.
“What did you get done this week?” Musk replied.
What makes it so good is that there is no answer to the question. Just some Twitter nerd versed only in talking about “optimization” (meaningless) and “company culture” (zero productivity value) blankly staring in a freeze.
The article concludes:
Members of Biden’s own party are dogging his open-border policies. Health and Human Services melted its own credibility on “science,” then recently flirted with recommending public masking again. The Justice Department is found out over and over again to be hostile toward the rule of law and the will of the people.
Which of the seven heads on this monstrosity is even bothering to smile at me? Why would I care if the federal government is funded when it does nothing for me? What’s worse, it functions in ways that make clear it deeply resents me.
Tell me, Republicans. What did you get done this week?
That’s a really good question.