Congress is Out of Control! What Would Mike Royko Have Thought?

"You know that little voice in your head that keeps you from saying the things you shouldn't say? Yeah, I don't have that!"

By Rich Kozlovich

A great many of you are probably too young to remember that great Chicago columnist Mike Royko, one of my all time favorite writers, who died in 1997 at age 64.  That just seems like yesterday to me, but that was 27 years ago, and time really does go by faster the older you get.

I didn't always agree with Mike, but he didn't have that little voice in his head that prevented him from saying things he shouldn't say either, and had an amazing ability to cut through the crap, cut to the chase, talking to and for "Royko's people, and he could really tic people off.   I really liked that. In 1980 he wrote a column about Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne, which I've no doubt almost none of you remember who she was either, saying:

The mayor “has managed to surround herself with as amazing a collection of political connivers, wheeler-dealers, misfits, incompetents, and deadbeats as I’ve ever seen.” 

Ya just gotta love that kind of verbiage.  I always admired Royko, and some years ago I wrote an article about Mike entitled, Let Me Tell You About Mike Royko, saying: 

I really miss Royko! He understood what everyday people were suffering and had a way of cutting right past the smoke screen of nonsense spewed out by those who are prominent and right into the fire. Have we lost sight of it? Are we capable of seeing past the claptrap that has become a substitute for accomplishment?

I was very pleased his son commented on my article saying:

I see many blog comments and commentaries about Dad, almost daily (thank you Google Alerts!), and I very rarely comment on them, but I really enjoyed yours. I think Dad would have too. Thanks, and keep on exterminatin'!

 Royko was:

The voice of the Everyman Chicago. Although caustically sarcastic, he never condescended to his readers, considering himself one of the people and maintaining a healthy skepticism about elites of all kinds. We could use more Roykos now........typically from the perspective of "somebody up against it....[America became laminated, with] its politicians phony, its values spiffed up and over-starched, its social discourse spooked by political correctness. It gnawed at him.....He cared about privilege, street-level fairness and hypocrisy........The ballplayers were in it for the money, the baby boomers were in it for the self-indulgence, and the politicians were in it for the polls. Whatever happened to the people behind the polls--to Royko's people?”

Royko was all about "Royko's people"!

From his articles you got the impression Royko had "confidants", mostly from his favorite bar, who allegedly kept him informed and insightful.  Well, in my case, I have Mike, a very conservative friend who is politically involved but not a politician.  

He's apparently on Ron Paul's email list, and during election cycles it's amazing how many of those lists one can appear on asking for donations, and that's what this was.  If interested,  support Campaign for Liberty with a contribution.  

Mostly I just ignore this stuff, especially when I get e-mails and phone messages from Joe Biden, who is somehow under the impression I'm his friend.  Remarkable!  However, in this case the Senator had a lot of insights worth reading from his commentary, Congressional Omnibus is Like a Bad Hollywood Movie Sequel, which also appeared in the Orange County Register, saying:

This weekend’s late-night spending vote in Congress seems like another in an endless series of sequels to a bad suspense movie. Just at the brink of “disaster,” just before the stroke of midnight, Congress pulls off a miracle and passes an omnibus bill to save us from a “government shutdown!”

The heroes have saved the day! (Editor's Note:  For those who don't get it, he's being snarky.  RK)

 Unfortunately, this latest sequel is as bad as the previous ones, as the American people are left with a massive $1.2 trillion dollar spending package to add to our already $34 trillion in debt. Military spending will, of course, be increased yet again, as the military-industrial complex demands more of our wealth to feed its ever-increasing appetite. And if this military spending increase is not enough, Congressional leadership is promising another huge supplemental bill to further fuel proxy wars in Ukraine and Gaza – with some money to provoke China as well.

Republicans like to talk a good game about reining in spending – especially during election season – but as we learned with this “compromise” and all previous “compromises, it’s all talk. At the end of all the dramatic warnings about shutting the government down, we are left with a Washington-style compromise, meaning the leadership of both parties gets to throw anything and everything they want into the massive bill. Because it is only presented to the rank and file at the last moment before “disaster,” none of the Members get a chance to even read it, much less shape it through amendments and debate.

The Republican House leadership promised the Members 72 hours to read any new bill before a vote, but they broke their promise without hesitation. Members would not have the chance to read the more than 1,000 page bill, which was worked out in secret behind closed doors

There is likely a reason that Congressional leaders did not want Members to get the chance to read the bill. As Rep. Thomas Massie discovered, buried in the bill is funding for 13 year old children to get help with gender transitioning without consent from their parents. He also pointed out that although nowhere was it in the authorization bill, just hours after the omnibus passes the Department of Justice announces the creation of a Federal “Red Flag” center to attack our Second Amendment rights.

Who knows how many more items like these – and far worse – are deeply buried in the “must-pass” spending bill. Keeping these items from the American people by secretly embedding them in “must pass” legislation increasingly looks like a feature, not a bug. No wonder Congress enjoys such a low approval rate among the American people.

In the end, the bill only passed the Republican-controlled House with the support of Democrats, fueling a growing rebellion against Speaker Johnson among House conservatives.

The media-celebrated “bipartisanship” is not all it’s cracked up to be. It means that both parties embrace policies that are leading to our financial bankruptcy. This further threatens the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and will result in catastrophic changes worldwide that nearly no one in Congress seems capable of imagining.

Republicans capitulating to Democrat demands to “save us” from a government shutdown may temporarily keep the appearance that “this is fine,” but in the end they are making the coming crash all the worse.

There's a reason the Republicans are called the Stupid Party.  They earned it.  And what about Royko's people?  They could care less.  If Mike was alive today what would he say?  Paraphrasing him he would have said the Republican leadership “has managed to surround itself with as amazing a collection of political connivers, wheeler-dealers, misfits, incompetents, and deadbeats as I’ve ever seen.”  .