Tag Archives: federal government funding

This Winter of Discontent. Time to Shovel Snow

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON | DEC 20, 2022

The end of a Congress reminds me of those blinding winter blizzards of my youth on the Great Plains. There’s no visibility. Drivers can’t see the road signs and pedestrians stumble forward across snow drifts and invisible ice with their head down. When the snowstorm is over, there is left a path of destruction and a massive clean-up job in the offing.

The end of the 117th Congress is howling to its close. Members have been in a hurried and harried race to pass a massive piece of legislation to keep the government funded. It is more than 4,000 pages, a virtual blizzard of politics, partisanship, and legislative language that members have no time to plow through. They will vote—or have voted by now—with their heads down, and their eyes closed, not having read the bill. Okay, enough with the metaphors.

Congress will get passed what it can, the leaders will call the President to tell him the Congress is officially kaput, and members will declare victory of one kind or another and go home. Actually, as this is written many are rushing back to Washington to hear Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy address Congress. Continue reading →

‘Tis the Season of Hope, Help, and Some Heroics

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON | DEC 8, 2020

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act became law at the end of President Donald Trump’s signing pens on March 27, 2020. It was the centerpiece of four bills aimed at relief from the virus.

Since then, we’ve been pounded by one crisis and one catastrophe after another: floods, fires, hurricanes, recession, and deadly riots. Compounding it all is a lethal virus that we couldn’t even name, let alone tame. It continues to rampage through big cities, small towns, and farms. It has killed 280,000 people from 15 million cases, with more dying every minute. That foreboding statistic doesn’t count those who have taken their own lives or succumbed to maladies associated with the pandemic.

The medical community, several government agencies, charitable organizations, and those incredible American volunteers who always show up in times of crisis have all mobilized to fight the virus. The outpouring has been life-saving and heartwarming. Continue reading →

A Mulligan for Hope and Change?

BY GARY ANDRES

Reprinted from Weekly Standard.com

Tuesday’s election produced another opportunity for hope and change in Washington .

Or at least that’s one way of looking at it.

Instead of wallowing in his party’s defeat, President Obama could interpret the outcome as a voter-imposed, political do-over – another swing at rising above the polarized politics of the past.

Continue reading →