E-Newsletter No. 63  ____  March 2019  

February was a busy month.  President Trump delivered his State of the Union address.  Congress then “successfully avoided” another partial government shutdown by passing yet another “omnibus” spending bill (more on that later).  And then President Trump was forced to declare a state of emergency to deal with the long-festering emergency on our southern border with Mexico.

Let’s start with the State of the Union address.  Here are some key excerpts –  

… large, organized caravans are on the march to the United States…  This is a moral issue.  The lawless state of our southern border is a threat to the safety, security, and financial well-being of all Americans.  We have a moral duty to create an immigration system that protects the lives and jobs of our citizens…  In the last two years, our brave ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of criminal aliens, including those charged or convicted of nearly 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes and 4,000 killings…

My Administration has acted decisively to confront the world’s leading state sponsor of terror: the radical regime in Iran…    We will not avert our eyes from a regime that chants death to America and threatens genocide against the Jewish people…

We stand with the Venezuelan people in their noble quest for freedom…  Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.

Unfortunately, shortly thereafter, Congress played politics with the spending bill (which should have already been in place more than four months earlier) and generated a 1,169-page bill that no one had a chance to read.  The “deal” was struck behind closed doors and violated the House’s own budget rule that requires the text of legislation be available at least 72 hours before a vote is held. 

Kay Coles James (the President of the Heritage Foundation) issued the following statement –

… today’s announcement is an unacceptable resolution to a genuine national crisis…  Congress has responded with apathy, negligence and incompetence…  We’ve watched as vicious and violent cartels have taken advantage of our lax border and trafficked drugs, guns and people into our land…  Congress again failed to live up to its sacred duty to protect the American people…  Frustrated with Washington, President Trump believes he has no choice but to take this action today… 

Obviously, different people will have different definitions of what is “immoral” and what constitutes an emergency.  We recently read an Op Ed piece that stated illegal border crossings decreased to about 400,000 last year (as if that was supposed to be “good” news) but the number increased to 47,000 during the month of January.  As we mentioned in last month’s newsletter, it is estimated that the number of people living in our country illegally is somewhere between 14–22 million, and the estimate of government spending on immigrants range from $113 – $279 billion EACH YEAR.  Our Editorial Board believes that this is a “more-than-adequate” definition of an emergency. 

Our apologies, but here is one more piece of bad news – – the federal government’s debt crossed the $22 trillion threshold during February.

But the one piece of good news from last month is that Mike Braun (the newly elected Senator from Indiana) introduced his proposed legislation entitled “No Budget, No Pay.”  We can hardly wait to see who is going to support, and who is going to oppose, this bill.  Unfortunately, we suspect that there will not be enough support in either party, or in either chamber, for this bill to become law.  But hey, who knows??

US Debt Clock – – February 1st – $66,895 per citizen / March 1st – $67,141