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June 19, 2023

To quote W. C. Fields, there comes a time in the life of every man “when he must take the bull squarely by the tail and face the situation.” A more appropriate description of the fetid swamp that is D.C. could hardly be made. Democrats are trying to destroy America as quickly as possible, and Republicans seem somewhat befuddled as to what they can do. After all, they only control (by the barest of margins) a single House of Congress and face a virulent incompetent across the Resolute Desk. Their leader in the House is suddenly being accused of being a squish, having surrendered in the debt limit negotiations while gaining very little.

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To quote Vito Corleone, it’s time to make them an offer they can’t refuse. And if McCarthy holds firm, America will celebrate. Let me ‘splain it to you.

One of the promises Kevin McCarthy made was that the House would operate under “regular order.” That means, among other things, that each departmental appropriations bill will come up for a vote by itself. So, the Department of the Interior gets a vote, the Department of Education gets a vote, and so on. This is radically different from “Omnibus” appropriations that have come year after year when negotiations break down, or the House just doesn’t get its work done. When that happens, bureaucrats celebrate, and taxpayers get screwed.

Image: Kevin McCarthy can be the warrior who saves America. (Made using an image by fxquadro.)

Suppose that the Speaker gives his various committees “drop dead” dates for getting bills to the floor. On top of that, suppose there are some conservative ideas in those bills. The Education bill might be a good place to start. After all, that’s where the street fighting is already happening.

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We don’t need to argue about whether the Department of Education is constitutional. It isn’t. But it gets in under the “general welfare” label for the moment. So, what would happen if the new DOE funding bill includes:

  • A ban on DEI programs
  • A ban on LGBT-alphabet soup athletes participating in sports as other than their sex at birth.
  • A ban on any funding to any school that has any restrictions on speech that is otherwise protected by the First Amendment (pronouns, for example).
  • A ban on any funding to any school that restricts student groups based on viewpoint or fails to provide adequate security for those groups.
  • A ban on any funding to any school that teaches “social justice.”
  • A ban on Federally Insured Student Loans or Pell Grants to any school where FISL loan defaults are at twice the national average (currently about 11%).
  • (Fill in the blank with your favorite that I missed…)

Notice that every one of these points is based on restoring constitutional and financial responsibility. Loans and grants allow schools to attract students for their Left-Handed Institutes of Social Justice and Underwater Basket Weaving. The schools don’t care if the students can’t get a job. The school got its money and moves on to the next sucker. The “student” is left holding the bag. He owes the money but can’t earn enough to repay it. He owes his soul to the company store.

Democrats will definitely have a hissy fit about this. But it’s time to recognize that the public’s appreciation of leftist crocodile tears is definitely limited. Real Americans have real jobs to pay for the real food they put on their family’s table. They just don’t care about coddled toddlers in adult-size clothes. It’s time for them to enroll in remedial classes at the University of Hard Knocks. They can register for classes at their local 7/11 or MacDonald’s.

This funding bill will be dead on arrival in the Senate because it gores too many leftist sacred cows. But will it get more opposition with one poison pill or a dozen? It just won’t matter. The House should make it a theatrical event. Put the bill in a fancy box. Start at the Capitol steps, then walk down the halls with cameras running and present it to the Majority Leader. Then go back to the steps of the Capitol and loudly proclaim that the House has done its duty to fund Education.

Now comes the hardest part of all: doing nothing. When the Senate screams, simply repeat: “We funded the Department of Education.” When the Senate sends a different bill back, ignore it. We don’t need the DOE. It’s positively harmful. So, if it gets zero funded by the Senate’s disagreement, what do we care? We funded it. The Senate refused to go along. And the leftist indoctrination establishment just got dumped on its ass.

Let’s repeat this with the National Institutes of Health. It’s almost impossible to find any benefit from any part of it, even the Centers for Disease Control. Every person of note in NIH has lied all through the COVID event. So, the Health and Human Services budget should include a prohibition on NIH funding any research outside its walls. Not the University of North Carolina, the EcoHealth Alliance, or the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Currently, NIH funds over forty percent of all biomedical research in the US. That means that, if you don’t toe the party line, you don’t get research dollars. And we know how that song ends.