(Deroy Murdock, Headline USA) Acting President Donald J. Trump is bringing foreign leaders to heel, unveiling Soft Bank’s $100 billion/100,000-job investment in America, and otherwise dominating the domestic scene and the world stage.
Conversely, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is failing Trump, betraying America’s taxpayers, and displaying a level of weakness that makes baby chicks look tough.
Johnson yanked a 1,547-page bipartisan omnibus spending monstrosity after its stench nearly asphyxiated Department of Government Efficiency leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump himself, and the 77 million people who elected him and Republicans to erase what this noxious measure would have enshrined.
The omnibus would have…
- shielded congressional e-mails from subpoenas
- handed Congress a $6,000 annual pay hike
- reinvigorated COVID-style gain-of-function research
- funded $3 million to inspect molasses inspectors
- spent $15 million to make recycling more handicapped-accessible
- underwritten Kamala Harris’s electric bus program
- rescued the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, a hotbed of anti-conservative censorship.
- corrupted federal lingo from “offender” to “justice-involved individual.”
“Who wrote this bill?” my revolted Fox News colleague asked Wednesday night, as he dissected this beast. “The Republicans have the majority. I swear to God, The Squad wrote this thing.”
This gargantuan mess totally violated Johnson’s pledge not to insult taxpayers with yet another pork-infused Yuletide omnibus.
“There won’t be a Christmas omnibus,” Johnson told journalists on September 24. “We have broken the Christmas omni, and I have no intention of going back to that terrible tradition,” Johnson added. “We don’t want any buses. We’re not going to do any buses, OK?”
Never mind the test of time. Johnson’s words did not survive the test of 90 days.
Either Johnson blatantly broke this solemn promise or he preemptively lied through his teeth, as he cooked up this Yuletide assault on the American people.
Johnson moans that he cannot control Chuck Schumer. But nothing stopped Johnson from rallying Republicans behind austere legislation months ago. He could have called Schumer’s bluff: Embrace House legislation or send a pricier measure to a conference committee for reconciliation. Both houses could have enacted ensuing compromise language.
As for this week’s deservedly aborted bill, if Johnson supported its profligacy, extravagance, and authoritarianism, then he is a Big Government socialist wolf in conservative sheep’s clothing.
If Johnson knew about these items, opposed them, but could not exclude them from the omnibus, then he negotiates as pathetically as a wimpy kid who lets the school bully snatch his lunch money without fighting back or at least screaming loudly enough to attract help and send the punk running.
If Johnson were unaware of the multifarious solid waste that polluted this bill, then his inattention to detail is terminal, and he has no moral authority to keep his post. If Johnson dozed during negotiations with Democrats, then Republicans should liberate him from the Speaker’s chair and let him catch Zs atop a back bench in the House chamber.
Whether Johnson loved the stomach-turning contents of this mercifully abandoned legislation, lacked the will to resist it, or somehow had no idea that these Leviathan droppings clogged this budget measure, none of these possible explanations recommends him to lead the incoming House’s 217 Republicans and their impending one-seat majority.
Until special elections in April fill the seats of incoming UN Ambassador Elise Stefanik, Trump’s new national security advisor Mike Waltz, and Florida firebrand Matt Gaetz, Republicans will need 100% attendance and total unanimity to adopt even National Apricot Month. If anything more controversial prompts just one Republican to defect, legislation would fail 216-216, provided that Democrats remain equally engaged and unified.
Walking this parliamentary tightrope will require someone with rock-solid conservative principles, a steel spine, iron will, the energy of Hoover Dam, and the focus and meticulousness of NASA’s Webb Telescope.
Does such a figure walk among the 119th Congress’s Republican conference? Who knows? But what this omnibus catastrophe makes excruciatingly and tragically clear is that Mike Johnson is not that leader.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.
