On Saturday, Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) pulled a fire alarm in the U.S. Capitol moments before the House was scheduled to vote on a bill which would prevent a government shutdown. Is Jamaal Brown ever going to see the inside of a D.C. jail cell? Many of the January 6th defendants who languished in those cells for months were charged with “obstruction of an official proceeding”. Wouldn’t illegally pulling a fire alarm to stop a vote on a House spending bill constitute “obstruction of an official proceeding”? Yes, but it is a Democrat who did it, so the laws do not apply to him. Just like the Democrat activists who illegally stormed Kevin McCarthy’s office a few weeks ago. They got a slap on the wrist. If you storm the office of a Republican Speaker of the House, you get a ticket and a fine. If you move the lectern of a Democrat Speaker of the House, you go to prison.
Later in the evening, the Senate voted to pass a Continuing Resolution to avert a government shutdown until November 17. The bill will go to Joe Biden’s desk, and his handlers will tell him to sign it, or he doesn’t get his daily ice cream cone. If the bill prevents a government shutdown, why would a Democrat representative, who only cares about the American people, want to prevent a vote on that bill? Because it works to the Democrats’ advantage for the government to shut down because they would simply blame it on the Republicans, and their lapdogs in the mainstream media would simply repeat the Democrat talking points – “Republicans bad; Democrats good”. That’s what the Democrats do, orchestrate these harmful events that they can blame on the evil Republicans. Why didn’t Nancy Pelosi agree to the National Guard protection of the Capital on January 6th that President Trump offered? She wanted a riot that she could label as an “insurrection” and blame it on Trump and the Republicans. And that is what this potential shut down is for the Democrats.
Earlier this week, we were told about the existential threat that a government shutdown would be and how it was all the Republicans fault. White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre warned us, "House Republicans' chaos continues to march us toward an extreme Republican shutdown, we are calling out how a shutdown would damage our community's economy and national security, and we're going to hold extreme House Republicans accountable. We're going to hold them accountable for the reckless cuts they are demanding as a condition for keeping the government open." Her last sentence proves that this has nothing to do with protecting our “community’s economy and national security”, it is about harming Republicans so her party can win elections in 2024.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said, "When we have a shutdown, farm service agency offices in virtually every county of this country shut down, and those loans are not available. It's not just about farm loans. It's about newlyweds who have decided to purchase their first home in a rural, small town, and perhaps they're getting a loan guarantee from a bank that is guaranteed by USDA." How many newlyweds are buying a home in rural America? Not many. But what has Mr. Vilsack said about the Chinese purchasing millions of acres of our farmland? Nothing. Those newlyweds will be absolutely destroyed when China achieves its goal of owning the lion’s share of American farmland, and he will do nothing to stop it.
And right on script, Democratic consultant James Carville called the House Republicans who voted against a short-term funding bill on Friday that could have prevented a government shutdown, "very cruel people" and he went on to say, “I don’t think they care about the FAA or border enforcement or drug enforcement or law enforcement or anything else.” As always, these are just empty talking points. Under Joe Biden, we already have no border enforcement; we have no drug enforcement; the Democrats have already crippled law enforcement. So, a government shutdown would mean nothing to these entities. Nothing from nothing is nothing.
If our entire country collapses if we shut down the government for a short period of time, then we have to rethink our government system and our citizens relationship to our government. If we are so dependent on the government that our lives will be destroyed if the government shuts down, then the government has too much say, too much power and too much control over our lives. It is even further evidence that we need to drastically reduce the size and scope of our federal government.
Remember, these are the people who wanted to defund the police and tell the average citizen, you’re on your own protecting yourself, protecting your home and protecting your family. And now they want to scare you into thinking that if the government is shut down, if the Department of Education isn’t open, the world will come to an end. It won’t. Keep the firefighters working, the police officers on the beat, the EMTs on the job, the public hospitals running, and the public schools open. Do we need much else? Maybe. But we could strip away 75% of our federal government, and the average citizen would not feel it at all. A lot of the millionaire and billionaire donors would lose millions and billions, but that should not be my problem.
The same people who are telling us that the country will come to an end if we shut down the government, were the same people who shut down the entire private sector a few short years ago. These are the same people who told many of us that our jobs were “non-essential”. If the government can shut down the country, close businesses, schools and churches, they can shut down the government. If they shut down the government as long as they shut down the private sector in 2020, there will be far less damage to the country All of these government fear-mongers know that if we did shut the government down, everybody would see how unnecessary most of the government is, and that is why they are trying to scare us into not allowing the government to shut down at all.
Some government jobs are very essential, but most are not. But the politicians use the few essential government jobs to scare us into thinking that every government job is essential. So, the people who, in 2020, could easily delineate between which jobs in the private sector were “essential”, and which jobs were “non-essential”, cannot determine that there are any non-essential jobs in the Federal government. Do you know how essential the government is? The Senate is only in session 154 days per year. The House is only in session 111 days. Most people work 250 days per year. People in the private sector work 60% to 100% more than our political leaders. But the politician are the essential ones.
The argument for that much time off for our congressmen is that they need to get back into our communities to find out what their constituents needs are. Not once in my entire life, have I ever run into a congressman or a Senator in my community trying to find out what the needs of his or her constituents are. That may be the reason why they have so much time off, but that’s not what they use that time off for. They use it to go on talk shows, write books, and fund raise. They’re not integrating back into the community so they can represent their constituents. They’re integrating with the millionaire and billionaire donors so they can represent their interests. So, the average person doesn’t care if the government shuts down because our elected leaders are not representing our interests, they are representing the interest of the people who donated all the money to get them elected. And that’s why they want to scare us.
Our national debt just reached $33 trillion. Think about that, $33 trillion. If we paid $1 billion a day toward our national debt, it would take over 90 years to pay it all back. When the leaders of both parties, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Grassley, Steny Hoyer, Dick Durbin, and so forth, first took office, the national debt was a little over $1 trillion. These people were the leaders in Congress that not only oversaw, but actually orchestrated the United States of America going $33 trillion in debt, and they all still have their jobs. The $33 trillion of debt is one gigantic failure on all of their resumes. But they will never be held accountable.
In 2019, federal spending was $3.5 trillion; in 2023, Federal spending was up to $4.6 trillion with a $1 trillion deficit; and by 2025, federal spending will reach $5 trillion with a $1.1 trillion deficit, and somehow the Republicans are considered draconian and evil for wanting to reduce spending back to 2019 levels which would essentially eliminate the deficit? It doesn’t equate. And these are the lies that prove that very few people working in government in Washington, DC, actually care about the American people. They only care about exploiting the American taxpayer to protect their careers, enrich their donors and promote their globalist agenda. And they can’t do all that if the government is shut down.
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Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.