You want more Trump? This is how you get more Trump

Democrats and Republicans get ready for one final spending blowout before year’s end

WSJ:

Including the American Rescue Plan, an infrastructure bill, last year’s omnibus, a veteran’s fund, food-stamp and healthcare increases, semiconductor subsidies, the Inflation Reduction Act, and student-loan forgiveness, Democrats have added close to $5 trillion in new spending in two years. They now want more, as well as the chance to add pork and policy riders.

Congressional sources tell us Democrats are asking for $150 billion in additional spending, split roughly between defense and non-defense. That’s not counting the White House’s separate demand for $9 billion more in Covid funding; a bipartisan push for $38 billion in Ukrainian aid; the annual “tax extender” dance; or the left’s child-tax credit expansion (at least $100 billion annually).

The additional $75 billion for nondefense would by our calculations be a 10.3% increase, on top of last year’s omnibus increase of 6.7%. The left’s answer to the inflation its spending ignited is to spend even more.

Democrats hope to lure Republican to sign onto all this with what would equal a 9.6% increase in military spending, on top of last year’s increase of 5.6%. This investment is long overdue, and stop-gap bills known as continuing resolutions are no way to manage long-term defense planning. Yet each year Democrats hold the defense of the country hostage to ever-higher spending for their domestic constituencies.

Republicans are fighting among themselves, with Senate leader Mitch McConnell favoring an omnibus while House Republicans prefer a short-term continuing resolution that funds the government until they take power in the New Year.

…

The GOP campaigned on a return to regular fiscal order, and why not start now? Democrats can threaten a government shutdown, but they’d own it as the party in control. If Republicans aren’t going to use their power to enforce some fiscal discipline, they might as well stay in the minority.

The risk here is that retiring GOP appropriators like Alabama Senator Richard Shelby see the omnibus as a last chance to pave his Birmingham streets in earmark gold. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—a spender at heart—emerged from a Tuesday meeting with Washington leaders to declare “widespread agreement” on the need for an omnibus. Cue the Democratic high-fives.

We’ll get more Trump if we’re lucky; more likely, we’ll soon be seeing Danny Ortega running the show.