All Hail Our Dung Beetle Overlords

Watching Congress at work, it seems time to drop the bald eagle and start using the dung beetle as the national symbol. In the now-distant past, Congress was structured to take specific votes on bills about specific issues. There was even a budget process, an appropriations process, and several committees of original jurisdiction. When the process started to break down, spending was less about specific measures for specific purposes with particular votes and instead became continuing resolutions and omnibus bills.

In 2012, Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) Chairman of the Budget Committee actually had the audacity to begin budget hearings in accordance with the established rules. Majority Leader Harry Reed (Pure Evil) ordered the process shut down. His party had a narrow majority in the Senate but the GOP had a majority in the House. Therefore it was better to shut down the process to force a continuing resolution rather than have to revisit any existing authorizations or take difficult votes.

Any reduction in federal spending would require specific looks at specific funding choices but if one can make all spending hostage to the excremental elements, that reduction never happens. The dung beetle protects ongoing massive deficit spending.

The dung beetle approach was in full effect in the 2022 Chips and Science Act which was ostensibly about encouraging more domestic computer chip manufacturing (instead of relying almost entirely on Taiwan) but also tossed out funding and stated goals for anything that might fall under the heading of science.

It looks pretty straightforward in the summary:

But then you see the astonishing, seemingly arbitrary dollar amounts in each subsection, the obligatory DEI goals and express pork items such as multiple regional centers for members who are senior or whose vote needed to be purchased. In the 40-page summary, there is a laundry list of sciency goals ranging from climate to the search for alien life with huge pots of research money to be handed out.

A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money. -Attributed to Senate Minority Leader Ev Dirksen ("Oh, I never said that. A newspaper fella misquoted me once, and I thought it sounded so good that I never bothered to deny it.")

If instead, for example, there were a separate, serious bill on nuclear energy with all the requisite groundwork and hearings, would it pass or be killed by ideologues? Does the federal government really need an Office of Science to instantly create infighting among all branches of science for funding? Is "Science" really such a generic thing that one bill should do it?

And the absurd but predictable result of the dung beetle’s handiwork in the CHIPS Act is that the supposed main purpose of the bill (to foster more domestic manufacturing, hiring, training, and research in semiconductors) has been thwarted by the fact that no manufacturer can function under a DEI mandate to hire incompetent workers who qualify solely on the basis of their victim status. See, DEI Killed the CHIPS Act

But in the dung beetle universe, that is how it is supposed to work, all public and private interests rolled into one big ball within which anything constructive, useful, or necessary is held hostage or obviated altogether by the preferences of ideologues and administrative state power brokers. And no member of Congress ever has to study difficult issues and cast meaningful, possibly controversial votes and tough choices. Just vote yea on the ball as it rolls by.

The ancient Egyptians admired and ascribed spiritual significance to the dung beetle whose daily task was thought to be analogous to the task of moving the sun across the sky. (I wonder how you say “I Believe in Science” in hieroglyphics.) But even the superstitious Egyptians were never dumb enough to base their fiscal management on the example of the dung beetle.