Joyce Krawiec serves in the North Carolina Senate. She represents Davie County and Forsyth County, NC. Christian, wife, mother, small business owner, and conservative.
Christmas of 2022 has come and gone. I hope you had a wonderful time celebrating with family and friends. I’m sure most of you did a lot of shopping. Well, soon the credit card and bank statements will start coming in and reality will hit. Some of us may be more in debt than we thought.
While we were enjoying celebrating the most wonderful time of the year, Congress was busy spending more of your money than you could ever manage to do. With the lame duck Congress almost ready to end the year, Republicans caved into the Democrats and helped them spend almost $1.7 trillion. This Omnibus Spending Bill is ludicrous, and citizens should be ready to suit up for battle and send some members of Congress packing.
Why would Congress pass this bill now? At the end of a session, with many members who won’t be returning. If this bill was so good, why was it not passed in October? This bill locks in spending by the Democrats through 2023. Why not wait until the new Congress comes back in January and Republicans would be in the majority?
The answer is simple. Cowards didn’t want to cast a tough vote before the election and be held accountable by the voters. I have no answer as to why Republicans would cave in now instead of waiting until the new Congress comes in.
The Federal government has already spent your grandchildren’s future and now they’re starting on the great grandchildren. They’ve emptied out the taxpayers’ pockets. Then they shook them for all the loose change and now they’re working on our grands and great grands piggy banks.
Americans should be outraged over the spending that occurs in Washington. The wasteful projects that are having money thrown their way are outrageous.
Senator Rand Paul, at the end of every year, has pointed out some of the most ludicrous projects funded in the federal budget.
Of course, the largest wasted spending project is the interest payment on the tremendous debt we owe. With interest rates soaring, the tab will be much bigger next year than the past year. The debt continues to grow, currently standing at $30 trillion. Interest paid by the Treasury Department for 2022 was a total of $475 billion.
The second largest wasteful spending was $4.5 billion to the Small Business Administration. It is part of the Economic Injury Disaster Loan grants. It was disbursed to sole proprietors and independent contractors. These entities were not entitled to receive these funds “based on established policy.” Last years report showed that almost 38% of these transactions were identified as “potential fraud risks.” Why isn’t somebody being held accountable for this mismanagement of taxpayer funds? I’ll bet you can guess how many fraudsters were held to account and pay back the ill-gotten gains.
Third in line for wasteful spending is $1.7 billion spent by the federal government to maintain empty buildings. An audit totaled the number of buildings vacant at 77,000.
The U.S. government spent $210 million on basic education projects in Jordan. I wonder if anybody even knows what that means. $168 million was spent to help illegal immigrants avoid deportation. Does that make any sense?
Another crazy project, $187,000 was spent to verify that children love their pets. Anyone could tell them that for free. $520,000 was spent to use mice in studying racial integration, $3 million to watch hamsters fight when given steroids, $3 million to inject beagle puppies with cocaine. I can’t imagine what benefit was to be learned from such craziness.
The Department of Health and Human Services gave nearly $700,000 to Cornell University to study parrots’ romantic behavior. The study was to determine if the birds kiss each other and to see the sexual advances of the male birds.
One more interesting provision in this 4,000 page spending bill, passed over Christmas. There is funding provided for border security in Middle Eastern countries, but the bill specifically forbids any funds to be used for border security in the United States. You heard that right. Funds may be used to process more illegal immigrants and provide transportation to other parts of the country but not for enhanced border security.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
Have a Happy and Blessed New Year.
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Joyce Krawiec serves in the North Carolina Senate. She represents Davie County and Forsyth County, NC. Christian, wife, mother, small business owner, and conservative.