Politicians Won’t Solve Our Spending Problem Unless We Make Them

"As was illustrated by Mike Johnson’s re-election as Speaker, the politicians we have only pretend to hold principles until it costs something."

By Connor O’Keeffe, Mises Institute

Last Friday, House Republicans opened the first session of the 119th Congress by voting to keep Representative Mike Johnson (R-LA) on as Speaker of the House. Almost every Republican—including pro-establishment moderates, Trump loyalists, and even the “hardliners” that make up the fiscally conservative Freedom Caucus—fell in line behind Johnson. The one Republican who refused to vote for Johnson was Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie.

Massie was mocked by figures in the establishment media for taking an unsuccessful stand against Johnson and disparaged by Trump supporters online for getting in the way as Republicans retake control of the government.

In his acceptance speech, Johnson made the same big promises we hear Republicans trot out every time they find themselves in front of a microphone. He said, under his leadership, Congress will “drastically cut back the size and scope of government.”

The Speaker surely had fun reading this dramatic pledge to thunderous applause. But it will be a lot less fun to actually bring these “drastic” cuts about.

That was made clear in the previous, 118th Congress, when a handful of representatives decided to fight—not even for spending cuts—but for a procedural change that could someday make it easier to cut spending.

Republicans like Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Freedom Caucus member Chip Roy (R-TX) pressured party leaders to agree to do away with omnibus bills and continuing resolutions which cram the entire federal budget into one single up-or-down vote.

The previous speaker, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), agreed to present twelve unique budget bills relating to different parts of the federal government—as had traditionally been done. He did this to secure the support of the Freedom Caucus and remaining dissenters during his messy, fifteen-round fight to become speaker at the beginning of 2023.

These budget hawks saw the return to twelve separate appropriations bills as a necessary first step in the climb out of our fiscal mess. Because, by stuffing everything into multi-thousand-page omnibus bills and continuing resolutions, politicians and lobbyists can easily hide handouts to politically-connected businesses and donors that are not easily uncovered in the mere hours Congress and the public typically get to read them before the vote is called.

And the all-or-nothing format of these bills leaves legislators no flexibility. To get the programs they want, they have to also approve everything they don’t. This setup makes the endless growth of government spending all but inevitable.

McCarthy agreed to transition away from this bloated spending process to secure the votes to become Speaker. But then, in the fall of 2023, as the deadline to fund the government approached, McCarthy went right back to pushing for the exact kind of continuing resolution spending bill he had earlier agreed to do away with. That’s why he was ousted as Speaker that October.

After Mike Johnson was voted in, he made a half-hearted appeal to the concerns of the budget hawks by splitting a spending bill—similar to the one McCarthy had pushed—in two. The Freedom Caucus opposed this as well, seeing it as another attempt to abandon the procedure change that had earlier been agreed to, but the Democrats came to Johnson’s aid and helped get the two “minibus” bills passed and signed into law.

Republicans always talk a big game about spending cuts when they’re running for office or speaking to their constituents. But only a small handful of GOP representatives in the 118th Congress demonstrated that they were serious about it. The rest folded quickly once it became clear that delivering on their promises meant they’d have to endure some of the bad optics that come with a government shutdown.

A month later, Johnson and his establishment Republican allies proved their timidity was not limited to budget bills when they set aside the wants of Republican voters and handed the Democrats the FISA reauthorization they had been pushing for along with an extra $95 billion in military aid that Biden wanted—for which he was praised extensively in the establishment media.

A few weeks ago, Johnson again tried to pass a single, massive 1,500-page spending bill. And, although Trump killed it and forced Johnson to strip out most of the extra spending, the Speaker again went to the Democrats to send the continuing resolution—which included an extra $110 billion in new spending—to the president’s desk.

So, in short, Mike Johnson and his Republican allies have already demonstrated that they—like Kevin McCarthy before them—do not have the kind of courage needed to see spending cuts through. The pressure from the media, federal bureaucrats, donors, interests groups, or some combination is clearly too much for them.

That is the reason Thomas Massie refused to vote for Mike Johnson last week. And, to his credit, Massie is clearly in a position to make that criticism. He has shown a willingness to stand up for what he thinks is right in the face of enormous pressure.

For instance, when Congress was trying to ram through an absolutely unprecedented amount of “relief” spending in 2020, Massie thought each of his colleagues owed it to the American people and to future generations to go on record and actually vote on it. For that, Massie was viciously attacked by the entirety of Washington—including President Trump.

Similarly, over the past year, Massie has faced extensive, nasty criticism and an AIPAC-funded primary opponent because he refuses to renege on his opposition to all foreign aid spending to make an exception for Israel and has been vocal about the extent of the Israeli government’s lobbying efforts in DC.

That’s what real courage looks like. If Congress was full of people as committed to the principles they espouse as Thomas Massie is, we’d be in a much better place.

But it’s not. As was illustrated by Mike Johnson’s re-election as Speaker, the politicians we have only pretend to hold principles until it costs something.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking the politicians who now control Congress will just do what they say because they say it. They respond to pressure. If we want them to actually carry out the cuts they claim to stand for it’s up to us to provide that pressure.

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