How to Manage a Holiday Gift List in 2022: Part Two
On March 6, President Donald Trump signed the “New Subsidies and Other Immediate Needs Omnibus Spending Bill,” a $1.3 trillion package of domestic and foreign spending measures that, in addition to several other provisions, will keep the federal government open during the coming year, and provide the money needed to ensure the U.S. has enough food, water, energy, healthcare, and prescription drugs to meet its needs. But while the president celebrated the passage of the omnibus, he could not have been unaware of the pending threats to our economy. As a result, Americans have begun to take back control of the conversation about the federal budget, and of the spending priorities that come with them. In the midst of the government shutdown, for example, Senator Rand Paul issued an ad warning Americans that “we can’t continue for another year on the president’s reckless spending.” And Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley told Trump in no uncertain terms that it was the Democrats who had to stop him from spending our money that he had taken from us and given to his cronies—we will stop you. On Saturday, March 13, the president said he would veto the omnibus if it included a new $1.3 trillion spending program to fight “radical Islamic terrorism.” “But the president is wrong,” Representative John Yarmuth told the president. “We cannot continue with an omnibus unless we address the spending problem.”
For a little while, it looked like a good idea. On March 1, the House passed a new border security bill, which included a provision to spend $1.3 trillion on border security, drug and trafficking laws, and other measures to “secure the border and enhance the prosecution and removal of illegal aliens.” And on March 10, the Senate passed the omnibus bill by a vote of 79 to 22, with the vote on amendments to it held back until the end, in order to avoid the “nuclear option,” which would have allowed all of its measures to move into the omnibus package: The $1.3 trillion funding bill, known as the Homeland Security, Rural Employment and Education (HRE), and Related Ag
