By: Roger Kimball – thespectator.com – December 19, 2024

It operates by subverting legislative responsibility for the sake of pork, on the one hand, and partisan interdiction, on the other.

In the 1870s, Gustave Flaubert assembled Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues, a humorous collection of “received ideas” and clichés then current in French society. A new version needs to be produced for contemporary America. As in the original, the humor would often turn on the contradiction or subterfuge implicit in the word or phrase. “Affirmative action” would merit an entry, since it is supposed to be about battling discrimination when in fact it enshrines discrimination in law.

So would the current favorite, “Continuing Resolution” (“CR” among the cognoscenti). The phrase carries the aroma legislative diligence. In fact, as everyone knows, it operates by subverting legislative responsibility for the sake of pork, on the one hand, and partisan interdiction, on the other.

A “Continuing Resolution” is the fig leaf Congress stitches together in order to conceal, or at least divert attention from, its failure to do its job and provide a fiscally sound budget in a timely manner. It has happened often in recent decades because the self-serving deadbeats we elect to govern us are, well, self-serving deadbeats. Did you know that the last time the United States had a proper budget was 1996?

The specter of a “government shutdown” is supposed to goad any legislators contemplating a defection from the CR to get back in line. It may not be amiss to note that the phrase “government shutdown” itself deserves a place in our new dictionary of received ideas, since the government never shuts down, more’s the pity. When push comes to shove, those in favor of the CR respond to criticism by shuttering some national parks and some bureaucrats cease even pretending to work. Never mind. The aircraft carriers continue their patrols and the really essential checks, like those that pay congressional salaries, continue to be processed.

I am fond of observing that compound interest is the fifth argument for the existence of God. The pneumatic properties of Continuing Resolutions provide another marvel of accelerated accumulation. The CR that is now before Congress, and which is supposed to fund the government through mid-March, started life this summer as a sparse twenty-page document whose centerpiece was providing disaster relief for those who suffered from Hurricanes Helene and Milton this summer.

Somehow, by some process of mystical agglomeration, twenty pages mushroomed into 1,547 pages. I pause so that you may marvel. This embarrassing pile of verbiage dropped just a couple of days ago. Congress is supposed to scrutinize it instantly, since a vote is due to be taken before Congress breaks for Kwanza, et al., on December 20.

Why the rush? Congress has known about the deadline for months. But if you plop a 1,500-page verbal turd on everyone’s desk a day or two before recess, you can hope they will just say “yes” so they can go home for the holidays. “The urgency,” as Department of Government Efficiency appointee Vivek Ramaswamy observed, “is 100 percent manufactured & designed to avoid serious public debate.” Bingo.

The bill does include $104 billion for disaster relief for those who suffered from hurricanes this summer. But it also includes many, many other provisions. One news source noted that the bill includes a “modest” raise for congressional salaries. “Immodest” would be more accurate, since the sly buggers in DC slipped in a 40 percent pay rise for themselves. Forty percent. This simulation was undertaken by trained drivers. Don’t attempt it at home. “How can this be called a ‘continuing resolution,’” DoGE co-chair Elon Musk asked, “if it includes a 40 percent pay increase for Congress?” Inquiring minds want to know. As the commentator Ben Weingarten observed, this monstrosity is “a Continuing Resolution in the sense that the Swamp has resolved to continue spending us into oblivion.”

But the bill is also a sort of prophylactic. It not only spends money; it also aims to prevent outsiders from looking into how it has spent money in the past. Accordingly, the bill includes provisions that would prevent Congress from investigating Liz Cheney and her one-eyed January 6 committee. (Item: the House “shall quash or modify any legal process directed to the provider for a House office if compliance with the legal process would require the disclosure of House data.”)

The CR also seems to have gotten a boost from Big Pharma. It explicitly forbids the secretary of health and human services (here’s looking at you Bobby!) from revising the “vaccine injury table” and further excludes compensation for anyone who might have been harmed by the Covid vaccine.

Criminals, the bill stipulates, should no longer be called “criminal offenders” but “justice-involved individuals” (it sounds so much nicer). Moreover, the CR extends funding for the “Global Engagement Center.” That sounds innocent enough. “Global Engagement” is a nice phrase, right? But in fact, as Ramaswamy observed, that anodyne-sounding agency is a “key node of the censorship industrial complex.” “The Global Engagement Center,” David Sacks notes, “was originally created within the State Department to combat ‘foreign disinformation.’ The Twitter Files revealed that it was actually censoring Americans. It would set a good precedent to disband a department that abuses its authority that way.”

I wish to associate myself with Sacks’s understated recommendation. The Global Engagement Center is an activity of the State Department that is currently being sued for its funding of the Global Disinformation Index, a British group that encourages advertisers to flee media outlets of which the guardians of the Narrative disapprove, including the Washington Examiner, RealClearPolitics, Reason, the New York Post, Blaze Media, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the American Conservative and Newsmax. In short, this “Continuing Resolution” is primarily a bid to continue the globalist, anti-Trump Washington consensus that has undermined the sovereignty of the people and the prerogatives of our constitutionally-guaranteed liberties.

In the past, Continuing Resolutions have always eventually prevailed. This time? Donald Trump is not yet the president, but his influence is already felt everywhere. One of his boldest domestic initiatives is DoGE, not a Venetian lord but the coyly named “Department of Government Efficiency,” an independent initiative headed by Musk and Ramaswamy. Their stated goal is to trim $2 trillion per annum in government spending. We’ll see how that goes. But they have taken the lead in opposing this partisan wrecking ball. Musk alone has been posting more than 100 items a day on X criticizing the initiative. As of this writing, the bill is foundering and Mike Johnson, the hapless and probably soon-to-be-retired Speaker of the House, is in weepy panic mode. Stand by.

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Source: The ever-Continuing Resolution – The Spectator World