X Is A Bully Whip

The CR Bill That Failed Proves It

Yesterday, the continuing resolution bill failed in Congress. All 1500+ pages of it. In times past, it would have easily passed. My friend Roger Simon thinks the Swamp is on the Run. He might be right but amazingly, I am more cynical than Roger and am not sure yet.

Predictably, the Democrats were all over Platform X yesterday and today, telling lies about what would happen if this bill wasn’t passed. Newt Gingrich straightened it out. Nothing would happen to essential services. Everyone would get paid.

Hakeem Jeffries and his pals don’t understand what’s happening beneath their feet yet. The earth is moving and they can decide to get swallowed up, or grab a rope and come along. Jeffries is in a deep blue district and has no fear of not getting re-elected.

The truth is if a bare-bones spending bill that all of America wants gets passed, no new contracts can be forged, and no new entities can get funded. Let the new President start with a clean slate.

Quoting Roger,

For my entire life and those of most readers, we have been hearing about the necessity of cutting government spending to prevent a form of bankruptcy that would render almost all our national budget interest payments with even the most basic entitlements threatened, not to mention military preparedness. It’s a good deal of the way there already. Something had to be done.

Amen.

When I used to meet Congresspeople, I got to speak intimately with them. I got to speak with staff members. The staff members are the people who actually make the sausage. Members of Congress just vote on it.

They’d come to the CME and I’d give them tours of the floor. We’d get chatty about trading and the floor and I would ask them about their jobs. I did this with Democrats and Republicans alike. I have some photos buried deep in my archives somewhere.

One time Senator Patty Murray and I were walking around the floor. We were talking about transaction taxes on trading. I showed her the math for what a measly five-cent tax per contract per transaction would mean to my bottom line. She was shocked and told me her parents ran a drug store in Washington state when she was growing up and they abhorred unnecessary taxes. From her track record of voting, looks like she forgot. Maybe DOGE will jog her memory?

Once I spoke one-on-one with Speaker John Boehner. We talked about spending. I said we need to cut it, just like Elon and Vivek are saying today. He was unresponsive. Mostly because he had bigger fish to fry than my complaint but that was Washington writ large over the entire American population.

I was chatting with my Congressional representative who at the time was Speaker of the House Denny Hastert once. We were talking about spending and I said, “Coach, you have made some first downs but don’t you think it’s time to make some touchdowns on spending?” He grimaced and clearly wasn’t happy with my remark.

None of them likes to be challenged. That paradigm has changed.

Members of Congress were supposed to listen to us, and then represent our views in Washington. They never had to because there never was a bully whip or an organized way to threaten them.

Now there is. It’s called the platform X and people with money are royally ticked off. The Community Notes feature on X is spectacular. The royally ticked-off people are ideologically and intellectually aligned, and willing to spend money to fund candidates who will listen to constituents and more importantly, end spending. Nothing motivates a Congressional member like a well-funded primary challenger. With free speech and community notes on X, they cannot hide or lie their way back into office. They can be exposed. Look at Texas Senate RINO John Cornyn and his statements on the spending bill. He is all of a sudden full of rage. Oh, look. John’s up for re-election in two years. He’s been a Uniparty free spender his entire career and now all of a sudden he gets religion? The rest of the Senate ought to pay close attention. The gig is up.

House members ought to be easier to get the message to. They are up for election every two years. If you are in a red or purple district, and you decide you are above the fray and can do business as usual, I can’t wait to see your competition in 2026.

This morning I saw two perfect ideas from people on X. Bill Ackman said every spending bill ought to be footnoted with a link back to the Congressperson proposing the spending. Accountability is a good idea and it works extremely well in the private sector. Entrepreneur Aaron Klein had a good idea about salaries. Congresspeople worked in a 40% raise into this continuing resolution bill. Aaron said that they should get a $10,000 raise for every $100 billion they cut from the budget. Incentive-based pay like a private company. There is that pesky accountability again.

Personally, I do think that Congresspeople ought to get a raise and I don’t think given the job they have to do 250k is out of the question. Especially if in the next two years they put their nose to the grindstone and work for it by cutting budgets, pork, fat, and spending out of the government. Especially if they get rid of all the unneeded agencies and polices that screwup America. They will earn it.

Of course, if we get term limits like a very overwhelmingly large percentage of Americans from both sides of the aisle want, the Congresscritters will have to work in the private sector and be productive, earning a living like the rest of us. Maybe then they will understand the true lash of the American tax and regulatory system.