Opinion Pieces

The following op-ed appeared in the December 8, 2019 edition of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

House Democrats are so busy trying to impeach Donald Trump, they forgot to pass a budget.

In 2017, Nancy Pelosi famously said, “show me your budget, show me your values.” Many took her words to mean that you can learn a lot about someone's deepest convictions by watching the way they spend their money.

What does it mean if you don't produce a budget at all?

When Speaker Pelosi declared by fiat in September that the House was going to pursue an impeachment inquiry, she was adamant she could impeach and legislate at the same time. Unfortunately, it looks like Pelosi can't walk and chew gum at the same time. Her promise has gone unfulfilled. It's the last month of 2019, and we still don't have a budget for the federal government for 2020. It may mean the government shuts down just before Christmas.

Usually, the president produces a budget, sends it to Congress, we make our changes and pass a resolution outlining our spending intentions, then we start doling out the money through the appropriations process.

When that process breaks down, and Congress fails to do its job, we run the risk of shutting down the government.

The president introduced his budget on March 11. It outlined a modest plan to balance the budget in the next decade. House Democrats haven't touched it yet. And that's where the process has stalled. So, the government will run out of funding and shut down if we, Congress, do not pass a spending bill by midnight on Dec. 20. Since we haven't passed a budget, let alone completed the appropriations process, the likelihood we agree to pass a normal spending bill for 2020 is extremely low.

Since we're poised to fail, we only have one emergency option to avoid a government shutdown: pass a continuing resolution. A continuing resolution means the government will be running on fumes – we will rely on the 2019 budget to map our spending for 2020, and then right afterward start the process for 2021.

I don't need to tell you the national security risks involved in shutting the government down. But here's why running on the fumes of a continuing resolution is dangerous.

If we pass a continuing resolution, the Pentagon and our military will get billions less next year than they normally would. We will have to cut $5.6 billion that would have gone toward deterring Russian and Chinese aggression. It also may mean pay and compensation cuts for our service members to the tune of $3.8 billion. We will see $12.9 billion cut from our efforts to restore military readiness, a fancy term that means we won't be able to do essential maintenance on vehicles, provide training for our service members or recruit new members to the military. Finally, we will be unable to rebuild military installations in Florida, North Carolina, Nebraska and California that were damaged by natural disasters in the last year.

It didn't have to be this way. In my capacity as chair of the Republican Study Committee's Budget and Spending Task Force, I led the effort to write the only budget produced in Congress this year. Not only did it fully fund our military, it would have cut wasteful spending and balanced the federal budget in six years.

Further, since I did not have faith Pelosi would use my budget, I had an alternative plan to fight irresponsible spending without hurting our military and threatening American national security. I introduced eight amendments that would implement 14% cuts to non-defense spending bills. All eight of my amendments were shot down.

Instead, we've done nothing except turn the House into a political weapon and pursue a partisan impeachment to hurt a sitting president ahead of his 2020 reelection bid.

It's all fun and games until you realize we have a job to do and impeachment is putting our national security at risk and harming American families. We are still spending ourselves into oblivion and haven't passed things that have broad, bipartisan support such as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Hoosiers are famous for our common sense. It does not take much to realize that Pelosi and House Democrats are abusing their power to play political games instead of doing their job. I think it is long past time to shelve this partisan impeachment and get back to work.