Key Vote Alert – “NO” on CR Path to Lame Duck Pressure Cooker
The Club for Growth urges all Representatives to vote NO on Suspension of the Rules and all Senators to vote NO on final passage of the Continuing Resolution (CR) through the Lame Duck session of Congress on December 20, 2024. The results of this vote will be included in the Club for Growth Foundation’s 2024 congressional scorecard.
This CR to December 20th seems like the recipe for a “Christmas Tree” legislative package that cooks up enough pressure in the Lame Duck session of Congress to clear the decks for the next Administration through special interest anomalies such as unpaid for disaster relief, supplemental appropriations for Veterans Administration, extraneous tax extenders, the Farm Bill filled with market-distorting subsidies, earmarks, and other unimagined gifts to K Street. The situation Congress faces is once again the result of Congress failing to do its job to pass appropriations bills through regular order. Instead, this CR is Congress orchestrating a car crash in slow-motion. While the House passed 5 appropriations bills, the Senate passed 0 appropriations bills. This CR is expected to come up for a vote in the House of Representatives under a suspension of the rules. Instead of a 5-week break over the summer, along with a 5-week break headed into the November election, Congress should have used those ten weeks to roll up their sleeves and use their power of the purse to complete the work expected of them by the American People. However, both parties of Congress prioritized their reelection campaigns over their responsibility to legislate in a fiscally responsible manner.
A devaluing of the dollar, continued pressure toward increasing inflation, and an increased burden on the American middle class decreases economic freedom and opportunity. The negotiation on this CR will likely result in a Biden-Harris Lake Duck Omnibus if one party wins the 2024 election, or a short-term CR if the other party wins. Congress should have the courage to make the right decision for the American people, not based on electoral pressure, but based on what is best for the country. Right now, the best decision Congress could make in relation to the best interests of the American people would be to cut up the credit card and cut federal spending.
Our debt trajectory is as certain as it is perilous. The latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Budget and Economic Outlook increased projected debt held by the public at the end of the decade from 116 percent of GDP to 122.4 percent of GDP – 16 percent higher than ever recorded – with annual deficits reaching $2.86 trillion in FY2034. CBO also projects a $1.938 trillion deficit in FY2025. To those willing to use common sense rather than ideological blinders, Congress clearly has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. While revenues will remain near or above the 50-year average of 17.3 percent of GDP over the next 10 years and climb to 18 percent by 2034 (averaging 17.8 percent), federal spending will steadily climb from 22.7 percent of GDP to 24.9 percent of GDP – well above the 50-year average of 21 percent.
This is unsustainable. Rising deficits will continue to squeeze American families through upward pressure on prices and interest rates. Government largess will reduce economic growth by stealing private capital and misallocating resources to prop up failed government schemes like the green boondoggles in the Inflation Reduction Act. Every dollar borrowed today is one that will eventually be confiscated from the American people through tax hikes or inflation fueled by monetization of the debt. This debt crisis will inevitably spark a fire-sale of U.S. Treasuries that would make the Great Recession and COVID lockdowns look tame by comparison.
There is nothing “reasonable” about a CR that does nothing to reduce unsustainable spending while setting the stage for a bloated Lame Duck Omnibus bill, or even Security and Non-Security Minibuses that will continue this unsustainable path and likely add countless anomalies as favors to special interest groups. Those who arrogantly and smugly dismiss those calling for the smallest measures of fiscal sanity in the midst of $35 trillion in debt have forgotten that they were elected to serve their constituents, not D.C. insiders.
It is paramount Congress avoid the crash of a Lame Duck Omnibus. Congress must cut spending to relieve pressure on inflation and improve the economic outlook for the American People.
Club for Growth Foundation’s Congressional Scorecard for the 118th 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.