While Americans are preoccupied with the ongoing crises in Ukraine and Canada, Senate Republicans joined Senate Democrats to quietly pass a "continuing resolution" to fund the federal government for another three weeks.
The move averts a shutdown of the federal government, but it also highlights the insanity of the way Congress decides how to spend our money.
Rather than creating separate bills to fund the various agencies and branches of the federal government, our wise and responsible leaders in Washington pass "omnibus" bills.
These spending packages are thousands of pages long, so none of our "representatives" actually read them. This is part of the reason congresspeople love omnibus bills. Politicians can vote for a bill but claim that they aren't voting for all of it. Omnibus bills provide political cover to both Democrats and Republicans, who claim to have been forced to vote in favor of an omnibus bill despite all the useless and irresponsible spending.
What do omnibus bills have to do with the latest "continuing resolution" that temporarily funds the federal government? Since omnibus bills are so large and so complicated, they require weeks to hammer out. Republicans and Democrats negotiate the deal behind closed doors as they decide which concessions they'll grant to the other party.
In order to give themselves time for these negotiations before the yearly funding runs out, they pass continuing resolutions to keep paying federal employees and funding federal programs until they can pass a more "permanent" measure.
Here's the real problem with omnibus spending bills: there's no incentive to ever cut spending. Republicans demand that their priorities be funded. Democrats demand in the same thing. In the end, both parties force the American people to pay for every priority, and the federal government grows larger and more powerful as a result.
No federal official can fix this problem. They don't even believe it's a problem. That's why we must look to the people and the states, and our most powerful tool is a Convention of States.
An Article V Convention of States is called and controlled by the states and has the power to propose constitutional amendments. These amendments can limit the scope and size of the federal government and force Congress to be fiscally responsible.
How? By requiring a balanced budget without raising taxes. By forcing Congress to pass spending bills one issue at a time. By doing away with pork barrel spending and by forcing Congress to cut useless "social welfare" programs.
We must take action now, before Congress spends our country into the ground. It's not too late, but we must come together and convince our state legislatures to call the first-ever Article V Convention of States.
Seventeen states are on board. We only need 17 more to make it happen. Sign the petition below to join the movement!
