There is chaos on the border. Record numbers of illegal aliens surrender to CBP agents daily, and record numbers are getting away. The Biden administration is letting in almost 10,000 illegal border crossers into the country every day.
Additional chaos occurs through President Biden’s open border policy, with hundreds being killed daily by fentanyl and other drugs trafficked into the U.S. from Mexico.
There is chaos in our economy. Biden has been the architect in massive growth in our federal spending, which has caused a spike in our national debt. In fiscal year 2023, CBO has confirmed a $2 trillion deficit, adjusted for so-called timing shifts. We owe our national creditors more than $33 trillion. And our out-of-control spending has resulted in inflation that this nation hasn’t seen for many decades.
There is chaos in the economy because the federal government has borrowed so much money, and the inflation it has caused prompted the Federal Reserve to raise the interest rate for borrowers. Home mortgage rates average more than 8 percent — a rate we haven’t seen since Jimmy Carter’s presidency. The high mortgage rates chill and kill the American Dream of home ownership.
There is chaos in our education system. At the university level we have seen a demonstration of the results of leftist indoctrination. On many campuses across the country there has been widespread support for heinous terrorist attacks on Israel by wicked Hamas assassins.
The chaos in our K-12 system is the spread of leftist ideology at the expense of learning the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. These foundational skills have been replaced with indoctrination of children in the LGBTQ+ movement. Schools are now pushing children toward sex transitions, and doing so in a manner to prevent parents from knowing what is going on with their children.
There is chaos in Democrat-run big cities throughout the country. Violent crime is surging. Property crimes have exploded. Car jackings, muggings, burglaries, and robberies have taken over many areas of large American cities.
The chaos that we see globally is due to extremely weak foreign policy of Biden, and even his military leaders.
The chaos is made worse because Joe Biden is finding some moral equivalency between the terrorist attacks on innocent Israelis and Israel’s defense against the barbaric attacks, as evidenced by Biden’s gift of $100 million of American taxpayer money to the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. Of course, just like the $6 billion Biden gave to Iran, it will be used by the terrorists and not for “humanitarian reasons.”
The chaos of a left-wing administration infused with left-wing radicals gives the United States a chaotic energy policy. The only thing predictable is that Biden and company will always do the wrong thing for the nation. It will demand that American taxpayers subsidize unreliable and expensive energy, like wind and solar, while driving out of the market cheap, reliable, easily distributable energy sources like natural gas and other fossil fuels.
There is a lot of chaos in our land and world today. I suggest that having Congress out of session without a Speaker for a couple of weeks isn’t chaotic, nor will it even be felt by the vast majority of Americans today.
Sure, it looks ugly. But in looking at the short list of problems iterated above, can you honestly say that any of those problems were caused, exacerbated, or would have been remediated by having a Speaker of the House over the last two weeks?
Israel is guaranteed more than $3 billion per year for the next four years from the United States. The House passed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act that furthers support for Israel just three weeks ago. The Senate hasn’t even taken it up yet. And, Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated on the Sunday news shows that the administration had money and the authorities necessary to aid Israel immediately. They will bring a supplemental request to Congress when necessary.
The spending problems? Congress was required by law to send 12 spending bills to the Senate by June 30. It failed to do so. Even without a speaker, Appropriations Committee could be and should be meeting now to finish preparing the last two bills in their possession for floor consideration. And when a Speaker is elected, the House should work nonstop until the eight bills remaining are passed out of the House and sent to the Senate.
This administration will never enforce border laws until Congress says no funding for any of its programs. Make all funding conditional upon milestones to secure the border.
The simple truth is that the American government is so big, and the bureaucracy is so nonresponsive to the legislative branch, that it will just keep on operating even without a Speaker of the House. Even when the House is not in session, you know, just like the seven-week recess taken every year by the House of Representatives.
But in the Washington, D.C. bubble, where all things orbit around the egos here, temporarily being without a Speaker is chaotic.
How about some additional points of chaos to consider.
- Republicans removed the debt ceiling and will not revisit any limit on the growth of our national debt until after the 2024 presidential election. The projection is that our debt will grow by $4 trillion over that period.
- We will continue to fund Ukraine, by at least another $50 billion, without providing a mechanism to pay for that spending (an offset) except to add it to our national debt.
- There will be more spending for disaster relief, at least $15 billion, without an offset. Tack it on to our national debt.
- We will no doubt aid our ally Israel-without an offset.
- There will be no reasonable limits on our discretionary spending, while representatives know everything we spend will be borrowed. Every penny.
- We have not, nor will we be able to successfully, eliminate the near doubling of the size of the IRS.
- Alejandro Mayorkas will remain in charge of our border.
- Biden will remain in the White House.
- We will not see accountability for Anthony Fauci and others who caused COVID injuries, and other attacks on our rights.
- The Department of Defense will still place primacy on wokeness rather than readiness.
- Congress will fail to get the appropriation bills done and will lose the strategic capacity to leverage the administration into enforcing border laws.
- More fentanyl deaths, more criminals, more terrorists, more illegal immigrants will be released into the country.
The point is that without a turnaround Republicans will have perceptibly failed to alter the going-off-the-cliff course that we are currently on. That is why a change of the Speaker was necessary.
A few decided that trying to alter that course was more important than whether our peers liked us or even wanted to work with us. Our determination is that the existential crisis is so acute that unprecedented action must be taken. Even if, even if it meant that we ruffled feathers.
Some of our colleagues refuse to vote for Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) for Speaker because they think we should be punished, or that voting for Jim would be a reward for the feather rufflers.
If one believes that we have caused chaos I urge you to reread the truncated list of issues at the beginning of this piece, and the failings of Republicans, and reconsider whether you want to prevent Jordan from being Speaker because of your loathing of me, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), or the way you feel Speaker-emeritus Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was treated.
Andy Biggs represents Arizona’s 5th District and serves on the House Judiciary and House Oversight & Accountability committees.