Our federal budget is due every year on Oct. 1. Our government has not passed an actual budget since 2008, sixteen YEARS AGO. Can you imagine a small business being run this way? Back then, the debt was $10 trillion. Today it is $36 TRILLION. As a result of not passing annual budgets for the past 16 years, Congress has passed “continuing resolutions” (CR), which are temporary funding measures to keep the bare necessities of the federal government operational when the regular appropriations bills have not been debated and passed.  CR’s are supposed to be RARE and limited. They should only last for a few weeks or months and only be used in exceptional circumstances. Last week on Dec. 18, just days before Christmas/Hanukkah, our “representatives” decided to allow themselves 1,345 minutes to read, comprehend and understand a 1,547 page, $110-billion-plus continuing resolution bill to avoid a government shutdown on Dec. 20. Before last week, the last CR was passed on Sept. 30, with an expiration date of Dec. 20. Despite knowing there was limited time between September and December to create and pass a budget, not only did Congress take off the entire month of October (to presumably campaign for the Nov. 5 election), they also left Washington the first 11 days of November and the last eight days of November. They were also off all of August.  If you are doing the math, that left a total of 20 working days in Washington, D.C., between October and December to get a federal budget job done. Shockingly, they didn’t pass a budget, so then they released the CR, claiming it was an “emergency.”  On Dec. 18, the text of the 1,547-page CR was finally released, giving almost no time for representatives (or us!) to review. One has to wonder how they drafted an emergency 1,547-page bill so quickly for this “emergency”! Thanks to some artificial intelligence, Vivek Ramaswamy and other active educators/social media influencers om X, the bill’s egregious items and its proponents were exposed. For example, the CR redefined murderers, rapists, sex traffickers, pornographers, child molesters and other criminals as “justice involved individuals” – all in a financial bill. (See page 1,400 of that bill.)  A 40% salary increase of $70,000 in congressional pay raises (from $174,000 annually to $243,000 annually) was included as was $60 billion more in taxpayer dollars to Ukraine. The CR included a provision for lawmakers to be able to opt out of Obamacare that the rest of us are mandated to have and included blocking of subpoenas for congressional communications data. It also funded 12 more gain of function research bio labs and a Washington, D.C., football stadium. It earmarked $15 million to “make recycling more accessible” and $3 million to “molasses inspectors.” The CR also included funding for the Francis Scott Key bridge to be rebuilt to the cost of the American taxpayer instead of the compan(ies) at fault and the insurance carrier(s) footing the repair bill and it would have given Congress blanket protection against Department of Justice investigations and “subpoena immunity for Congress.” (I mean, what could they POSSIBLY want that protection for?) Social media outrage exploded on Dec. 18. Thankfully, the CR didn’t pass and they went back to the drawing board. The second version of the bill was 116 pages and it removed a significant number of the egregious spending provisions mentioned above. The second CR also did not pass as it spent the exact same amount of money as the first bill. The third version of the CR finally passed on Dec. 21, and is now set to expire in March 2025. Here is the point: Congress knew about the December CR deadline when they created it in September. This was all a manufactured “emergency” to “keep the government open” and fear-monger that the sky would fall if the CR (and all their pork projects) did not pass. The government has been shut down over 14 times since 1950 and we are still standing. When Newt Gingrich was speaker (1995-1999), the federal government was shut down two times – once for five days and another time for 21 days. The sky did not fall – and guess what? He was able to achieve a balanced budget after the shutdowns! Moving forward, we should mandate that all spending and appropriations bills be footnoted with reference to which representative wanted a specific provision in the bill. You want $100 million to inspect molasses, Sen. Chuck Schumer? Great — your name is noted on that provision. This would allow the American people to see exactly who is pushing pork projects. My guess is the number of these special projects would drop substantially with naming transparency on all provisions. And constituents could see if their representative needs to be primaried for excessive government spending of OUR money. Better yet, lets DEMAND stand-alone single-item bills. We all like to order a la carte rather than choose from a greasy, messy buffet. We all know buffet food is lower quality, right? Most Americans would like their representatives voting on single-item bills one at a time. Hurricane relief? Yes. Farmers aid? Yes. Funding military payments? Yes. Funding Social Security? Yes. Pay raise for Congress? No. D.C. football stadium? No. Cancer research for kids? Yes. One by one — let’s see who votes for what. There is absolutely no reason to tie necessities to ridiculous pig projects of our reps. And another idea — no more trips back to congressional districts and no more paychecks for our representatives until a balanced budget is PASSED. You want to get paid? Then go to work and work, not on a CR but an actual budget. Congress made a conscious choice not to reconcile, debate and pass a budget for fiscal year 2025, like they haven’t in all the years since 2008. Our taxpayer dollars are being burned at an alarming rate and our government is saddling generations with debt before they are even born – IF we let them. There are no such thing as “spending bills” in Congress. It is all taxation. Tax bills that are not paid for.  Hopefully with the new administration coming in and the Department of Government Efficiency starting, monstrosity bills like we just saw will never see the light of day again and we will return to responsibly operating on an actual budget. Denise Lite is a Santa Clarita resident. “Right Here, Right Now” appears Saturdays and rotates among local Republicans. The post Denise Lite | Congressional CR Was a Pork Monstrosity appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.