Let it Fail

Progressive-Democrats are moving to attach a debt ceiling increase, or “temporary” waiver to the debt ceiling, to a continuing resolution that would fund the Federal government for a few more months. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) and Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D):

The legislation to avoid a government shutdown will also include a suspension of the debt limit through December 2022 to once again meet our obligations and protect the full faith and credit of the United States[.]

This proposal is both unnecessary and disingenuous. It’s unnecessary because as the Schumer Shutdown and the Obama Shutdowns both showed, the Federal government isn’t all that necessary in its present size. Indeed, some agencies and departments, forced to furlough employees due to the length of those closures, discovered that as many as 90% of their employees were unneeded, at least in those short- to mid-term periods.

The proposal is disingenuous because the debt ceiling needn’t be raised at all were Federal spending reduced to fit within existing revenue collections. The Progressive-Democrats, though, are hell-bent on passing their splendiferously wasteful multi-trillion-dollar reconciliation bill.

If the Progressive-Democrats insist on shutting down our government in favor of their out-of-control spending, let them. If their continuing resolution contains a debt ceiling raise or waiver, let the bill fail. Let a “clean” continuing resolution fail, too.

There’s an election coming up.

Update: Late last night, the House passed their version of a Continuing Resolution and debt ceiling raise bill along party lines: 220-211. Shamefully, the House Progressive-Democrat managers stripped out $1 billion that would have gone to Israel to replenish its Iron Dome system, depleted during the last terrorist rocket attacks from Gaza. Then Party voted down a resolution that would have restored the billion dollars to the bill.

That election….

Affordable Housing

People’s Republic of China style.

The PRC is cracking down on excessive debt in the country’s housing industry, or so it claims. The government also claims it wants

to lower inequality and keep housing affordable for the masses.

But it just blew up 15 high rise apartment buildings. Those were already built, their cost sunk. Those complexes could have been at the core of the Communist Chinese Party’s claim of affordable housing.

Oh, wait—nobody wanted to live there.

That’s centrally planned economics in action. And a lesson for us, were our politicians interested in learning.

More Foolishness

This time it’s from DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. He’s finally getting around to talking about dealing with the 12,000, or so, illegal aliens camping out under a bridge in Del Rio, TX, most of whom are Haitians. Recall that months ago, he talked about telling Haitians not to come to the US illegally as they wouldn’t be allowed in. They came anyway (I guess he doesn’t consider Del Rio’s bridge, on the US side of the Rio Grande, to be US territory).

Now Mayorkas is talking about deporting those under the bridge, seven flights daily to Port-au-Prince and to Cap-Haitien.

Those flights will leave from San Antonio and maybe El Paso.

But why? Why would these illegal aliens be bused 160 miles to San Antonio or 430 miles to El Paso to be put on a flight to Haiti? The Del Rio International Airport is just down the road a piece from the bridge—6 whole miles, or less, depending on the route the bus would take.

And when? So far, this is just more Mayorkas chit chat.

Further, what health risks are being inflicted on us Americans by routing these illegal aliens—10% of whom, by CBP estimates, have Wuhan Virus symptoms—all around Robin Hood’s southern barn to get to a runway instead of deporting them directly from Del Rio?

And these questions: what favored special interests are Biden-Harris and Mayorkis paying off for taking this artificially and unnecessarily circuitous route for deportation? What transportation companies are being paid off for taking part in this circuitous inefficiency?

A Very Deep Bow

Last Thursday, our illustrious Secretary of State, Antony Blinken tweeted out a straightforward, plain-spoken message of support for Hong Kongers following the People’s Republic of China’s disqualification of seven of Hong Kong’s local district councilors from holding the offices to which they were elected.

The PRC’s Foreign Ministry’s Hong Kong office objected to Blinken’s tweet, as summarized by the South China Morning Post.

strongly opposing “irresponsible comments from certain US politicians” on Hong Kong, saying that “no US slanders” would deter the nation’s determination to enforce “patriots administering Hong Kong”.

Blinken promptly deleted his tweet and put out this much milder effort:

Talk about bending down. Wow.

Pope Francis, Communion, and Abortion

This is a subject into which I’m going to poke my Protestant nose, which may be a symptom of my own sin of arrogance, but there it is.

Pope Francis insists that communion is a gift to all of us, not a prize for the perfect. He also says,

What must the pastor do? Be a pastor; don’t go condemning. Be a pastor, because he is a pastor also for the excommunicated.

He’s right, too, as far as he goes.

He also emphasizes

Whoever has an abortion kills. It is a human life. This human life must be respected—this principle is so clear.

He’s right here, too.

But while communion is for us sinners, including the excommunicated, for us who truly try to do better, who truly try to repent for our past failures, can it really be for those don’t bother, for those who reject the Church’s teachings outright?

It seems to me that those latter have taken themselves out of the church [sic] altogether. It’s not so much that they should be, or are, denied communion; they’ve made themselves ineligible for it.

And so it is for those who claim to be anti-abortion personally but fine with abortion for others. That strikes me as an especially grievous example of a sin of hypocrisy.

Bishop Michael Olson of the Ft Worth, Tx, Diocese:

He [Pope Francis] wants us to be pastors, and we also want to be pastors. But a pastor is not just a mascot for one’s private point of view.