On a U.S. Treasury Department website is this opening statement: “The U.S. government has spent $1.06 trillion in fiscal year 2024 to ensure the well-being of the people of the United States.” (italics mine)  That’s since October, barely two months!  At this rate, your “representatives” in the House and Senate are on track to spend $7 trillion again in 2024.  Are you feeling that “well-being” yet?

Still, this week the Senate passed the $886.3 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) by a vote of 87-13, with only six Republicans voting against the 3,000-page boondoggle.  That’s right, all the other “conservative” GOP senators (like Cruz, Tim and Rick Scott, Rubio, Cotton, Johnson, Blackburn, et al) once again pulled the football back at the last minute, Charlie Brown, and left you, the hapless and gullible GOP voter, humiliated…and on the hook for another almost trillion dollars in debt.  

I mean, it’s not like we’re already $33 trillion in debt, or that last year the feds took in $5 trillion but spent almost $7 trillion (which they’ll apparently do again in 2024).  What’s a trillion or two among friends, after all?  (Don’t ask the GOP House members… they’ll pass it on Thursday.)

How long, Republican voters, will you continue to abide this flagrant, continual, in-your-face-so-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it betrayal of principles and campaign promises?  How many times does it take before you recognize these people are lying to you just to get your vote, then they do as they damn well please… rather, as their donors and lobbyists want them to do. 

In 2022, over 12,000 lobbyists spent a record $4.1 billion to influence policy and legislation in D.C.  Do the math and you’ll see that comes out to 22 lobbyists per senator/representative, and over $7.5 million per Congress member!  (To be fair, some of that is spent on federal agencies, so it’s actually “only” $4 or $5 million per member.)  However many millions it is, I’m sure none of our distinguished gentlemen and ladies of the House and Senate are swayed in their opinions or votes by that gaudy sum… right?  As some wag has written: “the finest Congress money can buy.”  

As we approach yet another “most important election in our lifetime” in 2024, how is it possible that you still retain any confidence or trust in these feckless bastards who have betrayed you time and again?  Yes, I’ve heard all the arguments about how a third party now would simply ensure Democrat victories, but we don’t have to resort to that.  Besides, the GOP would spend millions in the primaries to defeat third-party candidates, just as they did against the fledgling Tea Party.

So simply return that favor: “primary” these lying, deceitful, self-serving professional politicians!  Yes, they’re going to get hundreds of thousands in donations from the industries whose bidding they have done, but that doesn’t mean you have to again listen to their well-crafted psy-op campaign lies. 

Here's a good yardstick: If they’ve voted more than once against limited government, free markets and individual liberty -- no matter their indignant protestations or rationalizations -- then vote against them in the next primary.  Find a challenger whose record -- not words! -- shows that he actually believes in his own campaign promises and, rather than re-elect the lying incumbent who’s just mouthing platitudes to lure you into voting for him, vote for that challenger.  What… can they possibly be any worse than what we already have?

But, you say, new Congress members would be just as subject to be swayed by all that money and influence as the old ones, right?  Well, that depends.  James Madison, father of the Constitution, said that it “was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  So make sure you vote only for a moral and religious candidate, one who’s willing to resist that influence and forego all that money, even if it means losing re-election.  After all, his job is not to get re-elected, but to do the will of the people who voted for him!  The Founders never envisioned “career politicians,” anyway.

Again, don’t listen to their words -- any huckster can claim to be a Christian, a la Elmer Gantry or the real-life TV evangelists -- but look at their actions.  Have they lived out what they say they believe?  If not, don’t vote for them.  No sense in just replacing one set of lying hypocrites for another.

It's either that or continue to re-elect the phony conservatives (like the reprehensible Lindsay Graham and his ilk) just because there’s an “R” next to their name on the ballot.  We’ve seen -- repeatedly -- how badly that turns out. 

Image: Pexels, Onkel Ramirez