Holiday Spending Spree

It’s starting to feel a lot like Christmas: Like a student rushing to finish the last essay of the semester, or a guest writer struggling to turn in the morning newsletter on time, congressional leaders have hastily agreed to a spending plan just days before the federal government was due to partially shut down for lack of funds.

Last night, lawmakers announced they’d reached a deal on a sprawling 1,547-page bill that will keep the government open through mid-March, reported The Wall Street Journal late Tuesday night.

In addition to maintaining funding levels for existing programs, the spending package includes an additional $100 billion for “disaster relief” programs and another $10 billion in farm subsidies, says the Associated Press.

The additional spending, plus the short amount of time lawmakers will have to review the legislation, has angered Republican fiscal hawks.

“1,500+ pages, billions in reckless and unpaid spending, new bills that we have no time to review and wouldn’t have passed otherwise—business as usual in Washington!” said Sen. Rick Scott (R–Fla.) on X last night.

A “clean CR,” right? 1,500+ pages, billions in reckless and unpaid spending, new bills that we have no time to review and wouldn’t have passed otherwise—business as usual in Washington!

Yet another reason we need President Trump and @DOGE to help us stop this crap and clean the…

— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) December 18, 2024

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) has tried to quell discontent in his own party by saying that he’d pushed for a “clean” continuing resolution, but that the urgent need to provide disaster relief necessitated billions in additional spending be included in the deal.

Democrats are generally pleased with the package, although support is not unanimous.

The spending deal includes a number of benefits for lawmakers themselves. It lifts a pay freeze that’s been in place since 2009 and allows elected officials to opt out of having to buy health insurance on Obamacare exchanges, reports Punchbowl News.

Rep. Jared Golden (D–Maine) has said he’ll vote “no” on the spending deal so long as congressional pay increases are in the bill.

For those counting votes, Rep. Jared Golden is signaling he’s a no because of the pay increase for members

“….Until the pay freeze is reinstated, I will not vote for this CR.” pic.twitter.com/NzM7XONxuy

— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) December 18, 2024

Pay raises for lawmakers aren’t the only sweetheart provisions of the spending deal. Also tucked inside is language that would transfer the federally owned Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington, D.C., to the city government (paving the way for turning the site into a stadium for the Washington Commanders), money for rebuilding the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, and crackdowns on trade with China and pharmacy-benefit managers.

This time, it’s personal: One aspect of the deal that is of particular interest to Reason readers, and I suppose Reason writers as well, is a one-year extension of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which was slated to close in 2025.

????BREAKING: The short-term funding bill to avert a government shutdown includes a one-year extension on the State Department’s Global Engagement Center — the agency me and @mtaibbi reported has funded speech suppression efforts and is being sued by the Federalist and Daily Wire pic.twitter.com/fWYaTzVepL

— Gabe Kaminsky (@gekaminsky) December 18, 2024

The Global Engagement Center was one of two State Department–backed entities (the other being the nominally private, almost entirely government-funded National Endowment for Democracy) that had given taxpayer dollars to the U.K.-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI).

Loyal, well-informed readers might recall GDI as the outfit that labeled Reason and a handful of conservative and right-wing news outlets as among the “riskiest” purveyors of online disinformation. GDI’s listings are intended to aid advertisers in avoiding placing ads on allegedly disinformation-peddling websites.

Needless to say, we objected to GDI’s disinformation designation at the time. As it turns out, the group has its own problems with transparency and accuracy.

The Washington Examiner‘s revelation that the State Department’s Global Engagement Center had funded GDI provoked a backlash from Republican lawmakers and lawsuits from several publications that claimed lost ad revenue as a result of GDI’s rankings.

The center’s congressional authorization was supposed to sunset next year, and the State Department had already initiated plans to transfer its resources and staff to other bureaus. Should Congress’ spending deal pass as written, the center will have another year to fund the disinformation industrial complex.

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Scenes from D.C.: After years of stops and starts, the district’s ban on cashless businesses is slated to go back into effect come the New Year, reports Axios. Businesses that don’t accept greenbacks would open themselves up to thousands of dollars in fines.

Some district businesses have moved away from accepting cash, citing declining numbers of customers paying with physical currency, the expense of handling and securing cash, and the safety risks of keeping bills on site.

But D.C.’s elected officials argued that a refusal to take cash discriminates against the city’s unbanked population. After years of debate, the City Council passed its cashless ban in 2020. Its implementation was frozen during the pandemic, went into effect briefly in 2023, and was then paused again as part of a public safety bill passed earlier this year.

As Reason has previously reported, many D.C. government departments do not accept cash payment of fines. Do as I say, not as I do, etc.

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QUICK HITS

• Ozy Media co-founder Carlos Watson is sentenced to almost 10 years in prison, reports The Washington Post.
• President-elect Donald Trump attempts to unite the country with a proposed repeal of daylight savings time.
• Ukraine claims responsibility for killing a Russian general via a scooter bombing in Moscow.
• A San Francisco jury has convicted Nima Momeni of second-degree murder for the fatal stabbing of Cash App founder Bob Lee.
• A new research brief from Brookings Institution finds a link between COVID shutdown policies and an early 2020 spike in murders.

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Source: https://reason.com/2024/12/18/holiday-spending-spree/