We’ve heard the tale about the banks being too big to fail, but have you heard the one about the government being too big to fail? In the past two decades, the government has expanded rapidly and without our consent. At one point, the government had grown so large that it became almost impossible to address personal grievances with them. Though there have been warnings of the dangers of government expansion and tireless efforts to limit the size of the government, we welcome the new decade with restrictions to our freedom.
Through a rushed approval process in order to avoid another shutdown, the United States government passed a historical spending bill valued at $1.4 trillion for the 2020 fiscal year. The bill is a modern-day perfect example of the problems with omnibus bills. Included in the bill is $1.4 million dollars for the US-Mexico border, $25 million towards federal gun violence research, a $22 billion increase in defense spending, and change in federal law that raises the legal age to purchase tobacco and nicotine products from 18 to 21.
While Democrats and Republicans can surely cite their areas of accomplishments within the bill, the bill as a whole is a spending disaster. While Democrats campaigned against building the wall in 2016 and 2018 and Republicans championed limiting government spending and waste, both parties are guilty of voting against their promises in order to prevent a government shutdown. In other words, they argue that they had to sign the bill to keep the government open.
There cannot be a citizen in this country that fully supports the passing of this bill. The increase in defense spending may excite the Republican base and the $25 million for federal gun violence research may be a significant victory for the Democratic Party, but when looking at the package as a whole, the American people have been ripped off.
How do they get away with this? They increased the federal legal age to purchase cigarettes from 18 to 21 in a spending bill. The American people are paying for a wall that they were promised would be funded by Mexico. The spending bill was signed into law by an impeached President who may have been illegitimately elected in a rigged process in the first place.
The answer is simple; the government is too big to fail. They have the ability to pass an abundance of laws that tax the future out of the American people because they swiftly include these in unrelated pieces of legislation. The government is legitimized by the election process, a process that many Americans argue is not efficient. Through legitimacy, legal wordplay, and a very loose interpretation of the Constitution, the government has the ability to be tyrannical without being charged with tyranny.
Elected officials have the power and the money to distract the American public with sensationalized coverage of hand-picked news stories that are interesting enough to consume people's time. They can make you look at one hand while performing a trick in the other. They can distract your attention to a political sex scandal while they prepare to initiate war in the Middle East.
What happened prior to President Trump signing the spending bills into law on December 20th, 2020? The House impeached him two days earlier on two articles, a vote that consumed the entire day, and a story that consumed the remainder of the year. Uncertainty on how the Senate trial will be conducted then became the center of conversation, all while the government increased spending and restricted freedoms.
We must be aware of how potentially corrupt the government can be. In the past four years, our media news coverage unveiled numerous accounts of government corruption and political scandals by our President and elected officials abroad. However, the American people only have the power of one vote to make a change. They have access to the tools of the public, thanks to social media, and persuasion, but on election day, we are all equally one vote. One vote is not enough power to punish the government. One vote is not enough authority to say we’ve had enough.
Without the power to discipline a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, the people are restricted to expressing their grievances publicly or not saying anything at all. The people then would have to collectively agree that the growth of our government has exceeded its constitutional boundaries, take these grievances to the polls, and hope that the politicians who promise to adequately represent them keep their promise when they’re in Congress.
On top of maintaining relationships with friends and family, developing in your career, and finding personal time, disciplining the government sounds like an impossible workload. We, the people, have lost the power and control of our government while they have increased their jurisdiction overtime, often without our united consent. We should have never allowed this to happen. The concept of individualism has been overshadowed by collectivist ideologies, unapologetic patriotism, and the power of the masses. The government has successfully thrived on an uninformed public and grown to be too big to fail.
Obviously, this needs to change. We the people need to reappropriate the authority that the government has legislated for itself back to the individual. We the people need to express that we are perfectly capable of governing ourselves. What we have created is a mess. Many active voters could not even begin to explain what is currently going on in Washington. We need to do more than talk; we need to act.
Comments