Our government isn’t looking out for us. That’s obvious to anyone with eyes.
And now the House passed on bill with massive ramifications for everyday Americans.
Washington did what Washington always does this week — it kicked the can down the road again. The House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution Tuesday that keeps the federal government’s lights on through December 11, all while doing absolutely nothing to confront the $40 trillion national debt and a deficit that’s already ballooned past $2 trillion this fiscal year.
The bill sailed through on a lopsided 370 to 48 vote, with only 19 Republicans and 29 Democrats willing to stand up and vote no. That overwhelming bipartisan support for more of the same tells you everything about how little appetite exists in either party for the kind of hard choices that actual fiscal responsibility would require.
Two House Freedom Caucus members, Texas Rep. Chip Roy and Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, tried to throw a wrench into the works, threatening to vote against a separate procedural rule as retaliation for provisions buried inside the CR that never should have made it in. Harris took issue with the bill’s delay of a scheduled ban on hemp-derived THC products, while Roy went after the package for what it didn’t include: no defunding of Flock Safety’s surveillance cameras and other automated tracking technology, and no dedicated funding boost for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection.
Roy didn’t hold back on social media, blasting the legislation in a lengthy post. “NO ON CR. NO ON RULE THAT DOES NOT ALLOW US TO AMEND AND FIX THE CR: The House of Representatives will be voting for a government funding continuing resolution TODAY that FAILS to deliver on common-sense policies for the American people,” Roy wrote. He went on to list a litany of concerns, including the bill’s failure to fully cut off taxpayer funding for abortion providers.
The day before the vote, Roy laid out the full scope of his frustration in even blunter terms. “I have similar concerns. Suspension, Hemp, CISA, Planned Parenthood, Surface Transportation (with no kill switch or flock fix), delay of OMB grant rule… to name a few. So Rule is an issue…” he posted. It’s the kind of laundry list that should worry every conservative watching how quickly “must-pass” legislation becomes a dumping ground for provisions nobody actually campaigned on.
Roy also fired off a letter to House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole and Budget Chair Jodey Arrington ahead of the vote, urging them to oppose the CR outright over its failure to close loopholes funding the abortion industry with taxpayer dollars. “Throughout this Congress, we have worked aggressively through both reconciliation and the appropriations process to advance key conservative priorities, particularly protecting unborn life and ending taxpayer support for the abortion industry. Unfortunately, several of those priorities remain unresolved despite those efforts,” Roy wrote in the letter.
House leadership, predictably, wasn’t interested in a real fight. They brought the CR to the floor under suspension of the rules — a fast-track procedure typically reserved for non-controversial legislation — essentially daring rank-and-file members to be the ones responsible for a government shutdown if they voted no. Lawmakers had just returned to Washington Monday after a lengthy August recess, and leadership clearly wanted this bill wrapped up quickly rather than litigated seriously.
What’s actually inside this bill is worth pausing on. The CR delays the looming hemp ban, blocks the Office of Management and Budget’s proposed rewrite of Uniform Guidance for financial assistance, and extends funding streams for agriculture programs, flood insurance and veterans’ benefits. Notably absent from all of it: a single dollar in actual spending cuts. Not one. At a moment when the national debt has crossed $40 trillion, Congress just passed another months-long funding patch that adds zero fiscal discipline to the equation.
Context matters here, and the numbers are staggering. The debt surpassed $40 trillion on August 20, and the deficit for fiscal year 2026 has already hit $2 trillion. The bond market has taken notice — the 30-year Treasury yield recently spiked to a 19-year high, driven directly by mounting concern over the government’s soaring debt load. That forced the Treasury Department to double the size of its long-dated Treasury buybacks, from $2 billion up to at least $4 billion per operation, just to keep markets functioning smoothly. That’s not an abstract Washington budget squabble — that’s the kind of warning sign that shows up right before real economic pain hits everyday Americans in the form of higher borrowing costs on everything from mortgages to car loans.
The Senate had already passed this same package back on August 8, right before senators left town for their own summer recess, so the House vote was largely a formality dressed up as deliberation. Lawmakers in both chambers spent weeks arguing over comparatively minor details, like whether to delay the November hemp ban until December 11, while the actual debt crisis barely registered as a talking point. North Carolina Sen. Ted Budd tried to strip the hemp delay provision out entirely with an amendment back on August 8, but it failed to pass.
The White House, notably, had actually requested the hemp delay itself, arguing that a brief pause would give lawmakers and industry stakeholders time to negotiate a sensible federal regulatory framework rather than abruptly shutting down what’s become a multi-billion dollar industry overnight. Whatever the merits of that argument, it’s a telling sign of Washington’s priorities that hemp regulation generated more floor drama than the trillion-dollar debt crisis staring the country in the face.
This is precisely the kind of governance grassroots conservatives have grown exhausted watching play out session after session. Leadership manufactures a false choice between passing a bloated, compromise-laden bill or triggering a government shutdown, rank-and-file members who actually care about fiscal restraint get steamrolled through a fast-track procedural maneuver, and the fundamental problem — a federal government spending far beyond its means — never actually gets addressed.
Chip Roy and Andy Harris deserve credit for at least trying to make Washington uncomfortable about it, even if their efforts ultimately fell short against an overwhelming bipartisan majority content to punt the hard decisions further down the road. With the debt now over $40 trillion and climbing, and another funding deadline already looming in December, the same fight is guaranteed to repeat itself before the year is even out — and there’s little reason to expect a different outcome next time either.
