We DO NOT Consent.
Governing by Omnibus sidesteps the consent of the governed.

The omnibus spending bill being pushed by Globalists (of both parties) in Congress right now is not only obscene for its $1.7 Trillion cost, but it’s also an obscene corruption of Congressional purpose.   

No singular piece of legislation spanning thousands of pages (4155 pages in this one) can be read and/or considered by the elected legislators tasked with voting on it. A bill that absolves legislators of the responsibility for considering and voting on individual allocations of taxpayer dollars is the very definition of fiscal irresponsibility. And when such a bill also buries provisions that further erode the rights of citizens, it becomes the definition of tyranny.   

Our representative form of government was designed and constituted to manifest a bedrock principle, articulated in our nation’s Declaration, of enlightened political philosophy: 

The people are the source of all legitimate political power. Government, therefore, derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.  

Our nation’s founders recognized that tyranny is inevitable when rulers are not answerable to the people. So the government they constituted featured a representative system by which those in office were conditionally authorized to govern. Their authorization is subject to regular elections – opportunities for citizens to either affirm or withhold their consent.  

Accountability of US legislators to their constituents is purposely subverted when we are governed by omnibus bills. Authorship of these bills by bureaucrats, foreign nationals, and/or mega-corporations is both invisible and unaccountable. Yet the result is ill-considered and unconditioned funding for nearly every program ever established. But the horrific waste that results of this process isn’t the worst of the problem presented by omnibus bills. Permitting such unaccountable governance is a danger to life, property, and liberty, rendering citizen representation absolutely meaningless.    

Those in power (both in and outside of our government) are able to hide provisions that advance an agenda directly opposed to the interests of the American citizens. Seemingly limitless support of Ukraine is a headline-grabbing, recent example. And to help protect this and other Globalist agenda items against growing political opposition, this bill even buries provisions that further impede citizens’ ability to challenge corrupted election results.  

The absence of accountability to the people renders this and every omnibus spending bill an illegitimate exercise of Congressional power, even before considering the myriad of provisions contained within a particular one.   

But many provisions within this one should be individually opposed for the harm they will do by increasing Congressional and Bureaucratic control of society at the direct expense of individuals, private entities, and economic sectors.       

For example:

• $100 million for “environmental justice” initiatives at the EPA. $90 Million of this is incremental to the allocation for 2022. What, actually, is “environmental justice”? It’s an entirely subjective phrase that replaces the EPA’s use of objective metrics of measure with the Marxist concept Equity (forcibly-contrived statistical parity among competing collectives). It’s worth reminding ourselves that any authorization to replace respect for citizens’ rights with an authorization to pursue a collective goal of any kind will permanently shift power from the people to the government.  

Under this bill, the Party-aligned bureaucrats of the EPA are much better funded in their regulation of entities according to ideologically defined “environmental justice” goals rather than against each entity’s objectively-measured environmental impact.    

• $300 million (more) to the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, a.k.a., the Globalists’ Money Laundromat. How much assistance to Ukraine is enough? There is no such thing as enough. The purpose of the exercise is to fund the globalist agenda. That understood, we must recognize that the limitless flow of our earnings through Ukraine (or the next laundromat, should this one close) and into the hands of corrupt globalists will continue until stopped.  

Mitch McConnell says, “Providing assistance for Ukrainians to defeat the Russians is the number one priority for the United States right now, according to most Republicans.” He is wrong on factual, political, and moral grounds. Americans’ number one priority is, was, and always will be the peace, prosperity, and progress of the American nation and her people.    

• $75 million has been allocated to the Federal Election Assistance Commission for award of Election Security Grants to states which engage in federally-approved election security and integrity measures. We can be assured that real election integrity, voter ID, for instance, will not be among the security measures qualifying for such grants. In fact, by the incorporation of the Electoral Counts Act Reform, the omnibus further erodes election security by fundamentally altering the Constitutionally-prescribed role of Congress in the election process in two ways – both of which make course-correction in the event of corruption nearly impossible:

1. 1. Defines Congress’s role as “ministerial” only. Henceforth, a mere show of Congressional affirmation, no matter how corrupt the process that produced it.   
   2. The reform to Electoral Counts Act raises the threshold for sustaining an objection to a state’s electors from a single member of each chamber to one-fifth of both chambers.   

Shouldn’t fundamental changes to the role of Congress as prescribed by the Constitution be reserved to an Article V process? It’s a worthy question. At a minimum, a change as significant as is made by this should NOT be buried within the bowels of an omnibus spending bill, rushed through as if an emergency.  

• $20 million has been allocated to subsidizing the training and placement of a workforce for the government-created “green energy” sector. It’s not enough to allow the Federal Government to prop up otherwise-failing entities by tax-payer-funded subsidies while purposely destroying others. We’ll now be forced to relieve the government’s pet companies of the responsibility for training and recruiting their own workforce.   

• $78 Million has been allocated to agencies across the Department of Agriculture to “address the impacts of climate change” by subsidizing transition to (more costly and less productive) “sustainable agriculture” methods. At the same time as publically warning citizens of coming food shortages, our government is paying agribusiness executives to purposely diminish yield in an ideological rainbow chase. This is reason enough, all by itself, to fight this bill like our children’s lives depends on defeating it.    

As has become regular practice now, the present omnibus abomination is being pushed through with the urgency of an unforeseen crisis even though fiscal funding deadlines remain the same every year. The “crisis” approach prevents considered, critical, or even rational discussion of the bill’s provisions and permits proponents to vilify as “obstructionists” any who demand authentic debate. Rather than attempting to avoid such labels, we should lean into them.  

It’s long past time we learned to effectively obstruct such destructive legislation as this omnibus presents. We should have LET THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHUT DOWN until the new Congressional term begins. We all know that essential government services continue, and only non-essentials are “shut down.”   

We could earn the title of Effective Obstructionists by then demanding meaningful constraints on Congress: 

1. Sunset Law:  Every law requiring funding by taxpayers should EXPIRE absent an affirmative, role-call vote to extend them. Legislators should be forced to own their individual up or downvotes. 
2. Single-Subject Rule:   Ban omnibus bills by adopting a single-subject rule; every bill must pertain a singular subject which is clearly stated in the name of the bill
3. Read the bills:  Every bill must be read aloud on the floor of each chamber before the vote. This, all by itself, will prevent the absurdity of passing gargantuan, unread legislation.
4. Economic impact:  Federal Bills having significant impact on one or more economic sectors should be subject to repeal by vote of a majority of states’ legislatures.  

Such constraints on Congress will never be passed by Congress, of course. We’ll need to convene the States under Article V of the US Constitution and offer these as proposed Amendments to the Constitution. As were the first 27 Amendments, they would then require ratification by 3/4th of the states’ legislatures.   

Difficult, yes.  But not impossible. And exercising this Constitutional provision for restraining Federal power is a whole lot more productive than is our incessant complaining about our eroding recourse against growing tyranny.    

ConventionOfStates.com