- It’s never the right time to vote for financial chastity…
- Maybe We the American people should look ourselves in the face…
- How page 1,943 of the U.S. tax code can LEGALLY save you thousands
Dear Reader,
“Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.”
The ancient plea of St. Augustine is the modern plea of the Republican Party.
They thunder constantly about the necessity for financial chastity:
“We’re heading for a sovereign debt crisis if we don’t rein in government spending”… “We need to start making major cuts to the federal budget or face the consequences”… “Washington is out of control — we need to stop the out-of-control spending.”
These laments and more issue habitually from elected Republicans’ oral orifices.
Yet when presented with the opportunity to embrace chastity… they vote instead for promiscuity.
We Can’t Be Chaste Today
In the official telling, it is never quite time for chastity. We hear, for example, that:
“The midterm elections aren’t far off. We can’t gut spending now because it’ll cost us in the midterms. We’ll do it once the midterms are over.”
The midterm elections pass. They win. Republicans are subsequently free to request chastity of the Lord — today.
Yet the temptations of the flesh seduce them… and they cannot put forth the request.
Come their successful election, additional excuses come issuing:
“Well, we have to think about the next presidential election. Cutting popular spending programs could cost us the election — and THIS is the most important presidential election in history. We can’t chance it. We’ll cut spending once we win the White House.”
Assume their candidate wins the White House. Next comes the return of argument A about the midterm elections.
Then comes argument B about the next presidential election.
On and on the business goes in inevitable yet frustrating succession.
It is eternally chastity tomorrow. It is eternally promiscuity today.
Congress Votes for Chastity Tomorrow
The Republican-sponsored resolution to keep the United States government in funds through September cleared the Senate floor Friday.
Thus the august legislative body skirted a “shutdown.”
Yet the continuing resolution authored the warrant for Biden spending.
Fiscal year 2025 federal spending will run to some $6.75 trillion — some $2.25 trillion greater than pre-plague levels.
Where is the justifying plague?
Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) has taken aboard his Augustine.
Chastity tomorrow, he says… yet not today:
- Voting for a CR goes against every bone in my body, but I am placing my full trust in the President’s long-term commitment to getting our fiscal house in order.
Who is willing to undergo the rigors of chastity today?
The answer is Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY).
A Vote for Chastity Today
The Kentuckian is the sole House Republican who would not come into camp.
His vote was the sole Republican “no” vote.
He voted instead for chastity. From whom:
- By continuing 2024 appropriations into 2025 with a “Continuing Resolution,” Congress just locked in a large portion of the Biden agenda for the first nine months of Trump’s presidency…
- The CR isn’t Trump’s agenda.
- The CR extends the last year of Biden’s agenda at substantially the same spending levels…
- The CR is a UNIPARTY deal. It doesn’t fund the wall. It does fund USAID.
- 98% of the US doesn’t understand in the slightest how CRs work.
- This is intentional.
- Reauthorizing all this funding is a slap in the face to the electorate who pushed Trump to victory…
- I’m not voting for the Continuing Resolution budget (cut-copy-paste omnibus)… Why would I vote to continue the waste fraud and abuse DOGE has found?
If Not Now… When?
I believe Rep. Massie strikes bullseye. I believe he has reduced the thing to its essence.
And here he levels his darts at the ‘chastity tomorrow but not today’ strumpets of his own party:
- The argument for CR in September 2024 was to fight in December 2024 after the election.
- The argument for CR in December 2024 was to fight in March 2025 after the inauguration.
- We were told the CR in December would get us to March when we would fight.
- Here we are in March, punting again!…
- The argument for CR in March 2025 is to fight in September 2025 because… we’re not ready yet ?!?!…
- 1. “We had to do a CR that extends Biden spending levels to September because we don’t have 60 Republicans in the Senate.”
- 2. “We will pass conservative spending bills in September.”
- Because we still won’t have 60 Senate Republicans…
- It amazes me that my colleagues and many of the public fall for the lie that we will fight another day.
It may amaze Rep. Massie. Yet it does not amaze me.
A vote for chastity would instead amaze me.
Trump Vows to Primary Massie
Alas, President Trump has declared Rep. Massie the common enemy of humanity.
For his betrayal, the president pledges to unseat him from his congressional chair.
I believe the president trains his cannons in the wrong direction.
I would rather him train his cannons on the promiscuous — not the chaste.
Yet chastity was never a virtue to which the president clung. After all:
How many billionaire real estate investors hailing from New York City carol the virtues of chasity?
Gimme, Just Don’t Tax Me
Nor does chastity appeal to Americans in the main… despite their professions saying it does.
It is easy to indict the promiscuous politician, it is true. It is easy to say this rascal has sunk the nation $36.6 trillion in debt.
Yet as I have argued before: If we haul the politician into the dock… We the People must go with him.
That is because the politician is simply We the People’s mirrored reflection.
Could politicians humbug us into a $36.5 trillion debt absent our knowledge — or consent?
Only under a very, very strange species of democracy.
We like being a big deal in this world. We therefore demand a glistening military machine with every whistle and bell.
We also like being tickled and wooed.
Thus we demand heaping doses of Social Security… Medicare… a Rolls-Royce education… and a million gaudy baubles.
Yet we do not wish to pay for them in full.
“Democracy in Action”
Many of us claim we are heart and soul for night watchman government. In theory many of us are. Yet in practice?
The hard-luck farmer wants his back scratched. The hard-pressed businessman wants his belly rubbed. The hard-worked teacher wants her apple.
Millions more are hard at the business.
All scheme to work the angles, to get a bucket in the stream, to get a snout in the trough… to catch a penny.
It is the triumph of “special interests” when the other fellow gets his — when his parsnips are buttered.
Yet it is “democracy in action” when our own parsnips are buttered.
“Lord, make me chaste,” we Americans plead collectively — “but not yet.”
I hazard we will say it next year, the year following, and the year following that one… world without end.
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
