Why do things never seem to change no matter who
we send to Washington? It seems like for decades people have been trying
to change the direction of this country by engaging in the political
process. And then election day comes and one group believes that
"finally" real change will come. And then the loosing
group believes that the country will go to hell in a handbasket.
But no matter how hard they try, the downward spiral of our nation just
continues to accelerate. Just look at this latest spending deal. Even
though the American people gave the Republicans control of the White House, the
Senate and the House of Representatives, this deal very closely resembles “an
Obama administration-era budget”. It increases spending even though we
have already been adding more than a trillion dollars a year to the national
debt, it specifically forbids the building of a border wall and there are
dozens of other concessions to the Democrats in it. These “negotiations” were a
political rout of epic proportions.
Perhaps many being highly unrealistic
when they expected that Donald Trump could change things. Because fixing
America is going to take a lot more than getting the right number of “red” or
“blue” politicians to Washington. Rather, the truth is that the real
problem lies in our hearts, and the corrupt politicians that currently
represent us are simply a reflection of who we have become as a nation.
The generations of people that founded this
nation and established it as the greatest republic that the world had ever seen
had far different values than most Americans do today.
So until there is a dramatic shift in how most
of us see the world, it is quite likely that not much in Washington will
change.
Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump
spoke about “draining the swamp”, but this spending deal very much
reflects the swamp’s priorities. The Washington Post has
published a list of eight ways that “Trump got rolled in his first budget
negotiation”, and the Post is quite correct…
1. There are explicit restrictions to block the
border wall.
2. Non-defense domestic spending will go up,
despite the Trump team’s insistence he wouldn’t let that happen.
3. Barack Obama’s cancer moonshot is generously
funded.
4. Trump fought to cut the Environmental
Protection Agency by a third. The final deal trims its budget by just 1
percent, with no staff cuts.
5. He didn’t defund Planned Parenthood.
6. The president got less than half as much
for the military as he said was necessary.
7. Democrats say they forced Republicans to
withdraw more than 160 riders.
8. To keep negotiations moving, the White House
already agreed last week to continue paying Obamacare subsidies.
In essence, the Democrats got virtually
everything that they wanted, and the Republicans got next to nothing.
Trump and the Republicans are promising that
they will fight harder “next time”, but Republicans year after year going
all the way back to 2011 have said the same thing.
Among many other conservative
pundits, author Daniel Horowitz is absolutely blasting these “weak-kneed Republicans”…
Now, with control of all three branches and a
president who sold himself in the primaries as the antithesis of weak-kneed
Republicans who don’t know the first thing about tough negotiations, we are in
the exact same position. Last night, President Trump signaled that, after not
even fighting on refugee resettlement and Planned Parenthood, he would cave on
the final budget issue – the funding of the border fence. But fear not, he’ll
resume his demand … the next time!
This degree of capitulation, with control of all
three branches, is impressing even me … and I had low expectations of this
president and this party. They have managed to get run over by a parked car.
It’s truly breathtaking to contrast the performance of Democrats in the spring
of 2009 with what Republicans have done today with all three branches. At this
time in 2009, Democrats passed the bailouts, the stimulus, the first round of
financial regulations, an equal pay bill, SCHIP expansion, and laid the
groundwork for other, bigger proposals, such as cap and trade and Obamacare.
Then they got everything they wanted in the March 2009 omnibus bill, and a
number of GOP senators voted for it. We, on the other hand, are left with
nothing.
And even the mainstream media is admitting that
the Democrats made out like bandits in this deal.
Just check out the following quotes…
- “Overall,
the compromise resembles more of an Obama administration-era budget than a
Trump one,” Bloomberg reports.
- The Associated Press calls
it “a lowest-common-denominator measure that won’t look too much different
than the deal that could have been struck on Obama’s watch last year.”
- Reuters: “While
Republicans control the House, Senate and White House, Democrats scored …
significant victories in the deal.”
- The Los Angeles Times describes
the agreement as “something of an embarrassment to the White
House”: “Trump engineered the fiscal standoff shortly after he was
elected, insisting late last year that Congress should fund the government
for only a few months so he could put his stamp on federal spending as the
new president.”
If Trump can’t get his priorities funded now, do
you think that the Democrats will somehow become more agreeable after he has
spent a year or two in the White House?
Of course not.
If there ever was going to be a border
wall, it was going to happen now.
The next “big battle” is going to be over a bill
to repeal and replace Obamacare, but the truth is that “Trumpcare” is going to
end up looking very much like Obamacare.
Instead of repealing it, the Republicans are
trying to “fix” Obamacare, and that is kind of like going to the dump and
trying to “fix” a big, steaming pile of garbage.
But like I explained earlier, we should not
expect things to move in a positive direction in Washington D.C. until the
values of those representing us change.
At this point, there are only a few dozen
members of the House and a handful of members of the Senate that even give lip
service to the values of our founders.
And until our values change, we are not going to
send representatives to Washington that share the values of our founders.
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