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One Chaotic Week in Congress

I think Democrats have all but conceded catastrophic losses in the 2022 midterm elections. That would certainly explain why they’re determined to remake as much of the country as they can, while they still have control of Congress and the White House.

That brings us to two massive spending bills on the table this week:

Bill #1 is a $1 trillion package that deals (to some extent) with infrastructure. Despite a lot of unnecessary spending in this bill, it passed the Senate and could pass the House if Democrats (who are in the majority) were united.

Bill #2 is a gigantic $3.5 trillion package choked full of social and domestic spending that seeks to expand the role of the federal government, and our cradle-to-grave dependence on it. This Bill #2 has a tougher path forward just because of how irresponsible and inappropriate it is.

Anyway, there’s major infighting right now between the two primary factions of the Democrat party: “progressives” vs. “moderates.”

(Side note: those two words are just marketing terms. In Congress today, “moderates” are liberals, while “progressives” are ultra-liberal bordering on socialist. If you consider yourself a middle of the road or centrist Democrat, that’s not really a thing anymore in Washington.)

Anyway, so-called moderate Democrats say, “Let’s at least get Bill #1 done, because we know that could pass and become law.” They don’t want Bill #1 to depend on Bill #2, because the overreach and crazy spending in Bill #2 may tank them both.

Meanwhile, the “progressives” are claiming to withhold their support for Bill #1 until they have assurances that their far-left Bill #2 will get through. In other words, they’re holding hostage Bill #1, which could pass, in order to force movement on Bill #2, which is a much tougher row to hoe.

NEITHER of these have my support. We obviously need targeted infrastructure investments. But that doesn’t mean we should be borrowing trillions on the backs of our children, or allow our infrastructure needs to be the vehicle Democrats use to permanently expand the size and scope of the federal government.

Separate from these two bills, and on top of everything else, the federal government is only funded through Thursday of this week, plus the debt ceiling needs to be addressed. So this is shaping up to be a chaotic week in Congress.