Because socialism is expensive

 Scarborough: How Did We Spend Trillions On Defense—And We're Running Out Of Munitions After A One-Month War?

Weasels are most active at night

 

As if ICE doesn't have enough money already from the Big Ugly Bill to murder Americans in our own streets, the bloodthirsty GOP Senate has voted to give them MORE intending to use the budget reconciliation trick

 

 U.S. Senate votes to advance $70 billion funding plan for ICE, Border Patrol

... Lawmakers voted 50-48 in the predawn ​hours to adopt the non-binding budget resolution and send it ​to the U.S. House of Representatives ...

Two Republicans — Senators Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski — opposed the measure.

If adopted by the House, the resolution will allow congressional committees to begin filling in the details on how the $70 billion would be spent in separate legislation ⁠that President ‌Donald Trump would have to sign into law. ...

Republicans plan to employ a rarely used procedure known as budget reconciliation in the separate legislation, which allows some budget-related bills to bypass Democratic opposition in the Senate. ...

Such measures require only a simple majority for passage in the 100-member chamber, instead of the usual supermajority of 60 votes or more. ‌Republicans hold a 53-47 seat majority. ...

After two U.S. citizens were ​fatally shot by immigration enforcement agents in Minneapolis, Democrats insisted that ICE and Border Patrol be subject to the same operational rules as police forces across the United States, including a requirement that judicial warrants be obtained before agents can enter private homes.

But weeks of negotiations ended in a stalemate. ...

Last year, Republicans passed legislation providing around $130 billion in funding for these two agencies, ‌separate from their annual appropriations and the $70 billion now being advanced in Congress. ... 

 

Jonathan Turley was writing a pretty good column until he got to "We have allowed U.S. citizenship to become a mere commodity for the most affluent or unscrupulous among us"

He never mentions that with one hand Trump wants to end birthright citizenship in this court case and with the other sell citizenship to 37 million foreigners at $1 million each to nearly wipe out the national debt.

I say nearly because the national debt has exploded to $39 trillion since Trump first proposed this crackpot gimmick in February 2025. 

Trump's only ideas about America are about money and getting more of it.

Turley tries to square the circle but remains no friend of the blood and soil conservatives who framed the constitution for "our posterity".
 

Our Own Birthright: We May Need To Amend Constitution

Jonathan Turley, The Hill

 

... After our Revolution, one leading Frenchman known as John Hector St. John wrote a popular book that asked: “What then is the American, this new man?”

 

The answer to that question was obvious at our founding. We were the world’s first true enlightenment revolution — a republic founded on natural rights that came not from the government but God. We did not have a shared bond of land, culture, religion, or history. We were a people founded on a legacy of ideas; a people joined by common articles of faith in natural, unalienable rights. ... 

DHS will remain shutdown, GOP-controlled U.S. House passes 60-day continuing resolution to fund DHS, ignoring the plan passed by the GOP-controlled Senate earlier

 The Senate returns in 2 weeks to take up the matter.

Kristi Noem did a really fantastic job running DHS, didn't she?

 

 

Senate Democrats get partial win, bill funding DHS passes without further funding for ICE and parts of Customs and Border Protection, which were massively funded last year by the Big Ugly Bill

Senate advances DHS funding bill, tees up House vote to end shutdown as TSA airport lines stretch 

... After weeks of Republicans fighting Democrats on their calls to remove funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement from any potential deal, the bill does exactly that. It would fund all of DHS except for ICE and parts of Customs and Border Protection, though it does not include the changes to ICE’s immigration enforcement practices that Democrats had demanded. 

... The shutdown began in February in the weeks after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis as part of a federal immigration crackdown. Democrats demanded changes in ICE and DHS more broadly and refused to fund the department. ...

After telling you that war is peace, get ready for the Ministry of Truth to say that the Save America Act about voter ID is a fiscal issue permitting passage under reconciliation

 In the Senate, Thune resurrects idea of reconciliation 

... Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, posted, “It’s hard to imagine how the SAVE America Act could be passed through reconciliation. And by ‘hard’ I mean ‘essentially impossible.’”

Lee, a member of the Budget Committee, has led the push for the chamber to debate SAVE and even pursue a so-called talking filibuster to pass the bill via a simple majority. ...

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said that “I don’t see any way that any part of the SAVE America Act [with] any teeth gets included in a reconciliation package.”

“On top of that, I think it’s very difficult to pass a reconciliation package. We don’t have big tax cuts coming. That’s really what got the last one done,” Scott said. “I think it’s going to be very difficult to get you know 50 of us to agree on something.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who opposed last year’s reconciliation measure, said, “It would seem on its face, because there’s so much policy involved, that it would be difficult to do.” 

“It’s kind of interesting to see if they’re just going to be pushing maybe some of the funding that could fit within reconciliation. But I don’t know how the policy fits in there.”

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, who has been part of hashing out the agreement between Democrats and the White House to reopen DHS, also declined to support reconciliation, saying “I don’t think that’s a good approach.” ...

The chamber’s conservative House Freedom Caucus called the idea “gaslighting” from Senate Republican leadership. ... 

 

 

Because they have nothing better to do

 ICE agents might as well try security theatre after deportation theatre flopped at the box office earlier.  

 

ICE agents will be deployed to U.S. airports on Monday: Homan

... “We will be at the airports tomorrow, helping TSA move those lines along,” Homan said, adding that ICE will assist in areas like guarding exit doors to relieve TSA agents for screening travelers. “We’re simply there to help TSA do their jobs in areas that don’t need their specialized expertise.” ...

If stuff like guarding exit doors is an area that doesn't need the TSA's "specialized expertise", why are TSA agents doing that stuff in the first place, and why are we paying for it?

 

 

GOP liars portray passing routine legislation under reconcilation rules as a standard part of the process when the gimmick is restricted to budgets and wasn't used for the first time until 1980

Now they want to make everything fall under reconciliation in order to make an end run around the filibuster. 

The Byrd Rule codified in 1990 makes legislation extraneous to the budget process, like the Save Act, ineligible for the process. 

Reconciliation Is the Strategy To Pass the SAVE Act

Gerrick Wilkins, RealClearPolitics

Trump thinks high interest rates are all Powell's fault when they are HIS: The war in Iran, the tariffs, the addition of $2 trillion in debt in seven months

 

Trump creates an emergency by attacking Iran, turns right around and declares an emergency to by-pass Congress and sell weapons to Persian Gulf states even though we need another $200 billion from Congress for weapons

 

 Trump invokes emergency powers with $23 billion in Gulf arms sales as Iran war wages on: WSJ report

... For some of the deals, the American government invoked the emergency clause of U.S. arms control law, a mechanism that allows the executive branch to proceed without the standard 30-day congressional review period, according to the report.

 

How war escalates to consume the state: Things don't go right after two weeks (!) and suddenly Trump needs NATO to come to his rescue and Congress to fork over an additional $200 billion which we don't have

 All because of one, supremely disordered soul.

 

 

 

‘We will remember’: Trump warns countries to help secure Strait of Hormuz as shipping stalls (Mar 16)

Hegseth says potential $200 billion Iran war spending request could shift: ‘Takes money to kill bad guys’ (Mar 19)

The U.S. national debt topped $39 trillion yesterday, five months after topping $38 trillion, seven months after topping $37 trillion

Recent National Debt Milestones

3/17/26  $39 trillion

10/21/25  $38 trillion

8/11/25  $37 trillion

11/21/24 $36 trillion

 

 

U.S. Federal Debt continues to be a very popular investment with foreigners who owned $9.2484 trillion of it at the end of 3Q2025

As of early 2026, the average interest rate paid on all outstanding U.S. federal debt is about 3.35%.

This rate represents a significant increase from the roughly 1.5% average seen in early 2022.

The chart was updated on Mar 4, 2026.

The $9.248 trillion owned by foreigners in 3Q2025 was about 24.5% of the total public debt outstanding at the time. 

The latest data available from the U.S. Department of the Treasury indicates that in Dec 2025 foreigners owned $9.2709 trillion.

  

 

For WHAT?

 Congress Could Get Healthy Pay Raise...

... In private, many members suggest they deserve higher pay ...          

 

Meanwhile the story never mentions insider trading, which is how the net worth of your average member of Congress becomes about 100 times that of your average American. 

Congress doesn't get rich by making $174k, let alone $250k, a year.

Not talking about the real problem seems to be the mission of Congress, and of the press. 

The CBO forecasted last week that we will be $64 trillion in debt by 2036

 ... In CBO’s baseline projections, whereas debt held by the public increases by $24 trillion from the end of 2026 to the end of 2036, debt held by government accounts remains relatively stable, averaging $7 trillion over the next decade. As a result, gross federal debt is also projected to rise by $24 trillion over that period, reaching $64 trillion at the end of 2036. Debt held by government accounts makes up 12 percent of that sum. ...

More (page 18).

Spending: Wei Tu Hai

Taxes: Wei Tu Lo

 

Nancy Pelosi's Speakerships were a double-whammy of obscene spending unprecedented in the post-war which never delivered on the economic growth

The double whammy burger you order never looks as good as the picture.

 

We're already close to the first: As of Feb 2026, the average interest rate on the U.S. National Debt is 3.4% while the compound annual rate of nominal GDP growth from 3Q2007 to 3Q2025 is only 4.3%

 One path to U.S. fiscal disaster is most alarming — and most likely

... An Everest of debt is an incentive for an inflation crisis to reduce the value of existing debt by paying lenders with debased dollars. But inflation would become baked into the expectations of investors, who would demand higher interest rates. Then R>G would bite: When interest rates paid on debt exceed the rate of economic growth, a crisis intensifies as rising interest rates depress economic growth. ... The most probable, and most ominous, outcome would be a gradual crisis. ... Nothing unsettles a middle-class nation more rapidly than inflation, a component of all of these crises. ...

The biggest number in this story is $293.6 million

 Wake me when the New York Post writes a story entitled:

 

Trump's $75 billion ICE Police State rammed through right-wing Congress at taxpayer expense under phony reconciliation rules

 

‘Grassroots’ anti-ICE campaigns funded by left-wing billionaire donors: sources 

American Greatness confidently tells us that the American and French revolutions had nothing whatsover to do with one another when French financial support of the American one lead to theirs

Seen here:

... The two revolutions had nothing whatsoever to do with one another ...             

They had more to do with one another than not.

Louis XVI unwisely spent literally billions of dollars he did not have supporting the American revolution. His motivation for support was revenge against Britain. Most of it was piled up as high interest debt which the rich of the French aristocracy and of the Church refused to pay but the peasantry could not. Add famine into the mix after trying to squeeze blood out of that turnip and boom.

Donald Trump is spending $75 billion we don't have to round up illegal aliens in the streets using militarized police, but he refuses to punish the employers who get rich off their labor. He got elected promising to cut food and energy costs but here we are one year later and those things still cost a fortune. 

Two Americans have been murdered in the streets by government agents.

You can see where this could go, but American Greatness can't.