Key Vote Alert – House and Senate – NO on Radical Lame Duck Omnibus

“NO” on Radical Lame Duck Omnibus

The Club for Growth opposes the Radical Lame Duck Omnibus and urges all Senators and Representatives to vote NO. The results of this vote will be included in the Club for Growth Foundation’s 2022 congressional scorecard. If the United States Senate splits the bill in half between the security and nonsecurity sections, both votes will be included in the scorecard.

The Radical Lame Duck Omnibus appropriations bill was released in the middle of the night. The legislative text includes 4,155 pages – which does not include report language. Congress will imminently vote to make this bill law. Nobody will have read the full bill, nor will the American people have a full understanding of what the bill funds and doesn’t fund. This is bad process which should be resolved by Congress passing and enacting 12 separate appropriations bills throughout the course of the year. Not in the panicked days leading up to Christmas.

The bill is effectively the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Lame Duck Omnibus because of its funding priorities. It is also loaded with earmarks, including 3,213 earmarks just for Democrats. Pork projects included rename federal buildings after Nancy Pelosi and Richard Shelby, and they also include renamed programs after Patrick Leahy. What’s worse is that this bill includes earmarks funding wokeism: federal funds for LGBTQ+ museums in New York, community spaces for gender-expansive people in Ohio, a Pride Center in California, and more. The bill also includes $1.5 million for the COVID-19 American History Project and $3.5 million to fund the Office of Diversity and Inclusion in Congress.

Most Members of Congress agree in the Constitutional obligation to fully fund the national defense and national security of the American people through the federal government. But this bill includes $2 billion to “tackle the climate change crisis” as part of our national defense. It also funds more of the Green New Deal by including another $1.7 BILLION to support transit, bicycle, pedestrian, & passenger rail to support local projects that “promote green infrastructure, invest in resilient communities and help address climate change” as if the green provisions in the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” were not enough.

The bill also includes so-called emergency supplemental appropriations related to Ukraine funding and disaster relief funding. Congress should not use the Omnibus as a legislative vehicle to fund these items because they are not current “emergencies”. Instead, Congress should consider each of these bills separately on their own merits in a timely fashion, not mere political expediency.

The bill waives budgetary enforcement of statutory PAYGO for two years, which effectively increases the costs of passing the bill by $130 billion each year – or $260 billion. President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, also known as the Biden Stimulus of 2021 has been an inflation bomb. By waiving PAYGO, even more costs are incurred by the federal government which will create a secondary “blast” on inflation in 2023. This is economic harm purposely being unleased by Democrats in the White House, House of Representatives, and United States Senate.

Why?

Because Democrats’ long-term goal is to usher in a new era of government dependency and to promote Socialism in America. Their radical vision will destroy economic prosperity, self-sufficiency, productivity, wage growth, and job creation in America.

There is obviously so much more tucked within these 4,155 pages. A better solution would be for Congress to pass a short-term Continuing Resolution that enables the new House Republican Majority to have a seat at the table in negotiations and to start over considering each Appropriations Subcommittee bill on its own.

Club for Growth Foundation’s Congressional Scorecard for the 117th Congress provides a comprehensive rating of how well or how poorly each member of Congress supports pro-growth, free-market policies and will be distributed to the public.