Budget Wish List
A survey was released yesterday showing what items given as Christmas gifts are most often returned to the store by recipients.
Something that is not on the list, but should be, is “pieces of legislation passed by Congress at the last minute so representatives can get home for the holidays”…because without fail, those things never last, are far too big size-wise, and feel like something they would never buy for themselves.
Yet here we are again, on a collision course with a Friday deadline. Keep in mind, the federal budget year began on October 1, so we are already two and a half months in to the 12-month fiscal year. At this point, it appears the best we can hope for is to kick the can down the road yet again until, perhaps, March—which then is five months into the budget year, and the time when regular order suggests we should begin planning for the following year’s budget.
Good luck trying this with your home budget and finances.
As I write this on Monday afternoon, we’re still unsure of the fallout from the weekend disintegration of talks on the topic. Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to put a deal together, but Politico reports that farm state Republicans aren’t going to get economic aid to farmers in the continuing resolution, so some of them may vote “no”—now, on this week’s spending plan, and perhaps also when it comes time to elect a Speaker in January.
The five year farm bill was supposed to have been passed a year ago, and the current one-year extension of even those outdated provisions will soon expire. The Republican chair of the House ag committee said over the weekend he would vote against any spending measure this week that left out aid to farmers, and the American Farm Bureau Federation is calling on other lawmakers to do the same.
This last minute—or after the deadline—stuff works as well as if you do your Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve afternoon. Most shoppers learn after a few failed exercises…wish Congress would, too.
