The $1.4 trillion budget currently being rammed through Congress should attract our attention because it’s yet another massive behemoth monstrosity of a spending bill and it yet again signals that fiscal conservatism, if it ever existed at all, has been dead for many decades. The budget will add $500 billion to our deficits, meaning the government will spend vastly more than the nearly $4 trillion it collects in tax revenue annually. Our leaders in Washington already appropriate the equivalent of the entire net worth of half of the world’s billionaires every year, but it’s not enough, we’re told. Not even close to enough. Thus, deficits and crippling national debt.
If this wasn’t bad enough — and made all the worse by the fact that Republican voters appear entirely apathetic about this issue, despite all of the Tea Party theatrics a few years ago — consider what else they’ve jammed into this bill. Despite being at best only vaguely related to spending and budgets, a group of Democrats and Republicans have crafted a plan to raise the age for purchasing tobacco products from 18 to 21, and they’ve attached it like a barnacle onto this budgetary Titanic. Once the bill is made law, it will be illegal across the country to sell tobacco or vaping products to anyone under the age of 21.
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