 Mark Thornton has a special offer for fans of minor issues, a free copy of Murray Rothbard's famous work, Anatomy of the State. This is a limited time offer, so act fast. Get yours today at mesis.org slash issues free. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Minor Issues podcast. I'm Mark Thornton at the Mises Institute. Well, knowing the political playbook of the federal government, particularly Congress, is very helpful. I call it the Congressional Political Playbook, and we're going to take a chapter out of that book today. Politicians have dependable motives and aspirations and are under identifiable constraints. Most want power, prestige, and a fat paycheck. They also need enormous donations from special interest groups, also known as bribery. Most of all, they want to get reelected. They do express support for some of the things we want, but only do them if and when it will help get them elected. Ron Paul, of course, is an outlier. True renegades can exist, but only if the people of a state or congressional district have a solid, good ideology. In other words, you can guess what they will do as a group or at least understand what they are up to in retrospect. In this episode, let us take a look into the Congressional Playbook and examine the recent agreement on the federal budget. You could name it the slash the federal budget to pieces act of 2024. You can depend on Congress to mislabel its own legislation. Whatever they call it, the probability is very high that it is misleading, misnamed, and often does the exact opposite of what it's called. You may not want to call it the draconian budget slashing act of 2024, but they certainly won't name it for what it actually does. For example, President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 state to claim that whatever is contained in that legislation would lower cost and at least lead to lower increases in prices, allow the consumer price index. However, the legislation is actually a massive spending law that will divert and has diverted vast resources into unproductive paths desired largely by environmentalist and globalist agendas, the green industries and green washers alike, all in the name of climate change. It has also helped gross domestic product to stay in the black and technically out of an official recession. Of course, the primary culprit of price inflation is the Federal Reserve and their expansionary monetary policy. Therefore, only things that congressional legislation can do to reduce inflation or prices rising unless it were to actually end the Fed would be to help reduce the cost of production for productive businesses that might help mitigate the impact of the Fed's inflationary monetary policy. So a legislative act could impose draconian spending cuts to the federal budget, which would free up resources for the private sector and help alleviate the need for future monetary inflation. Legislation could enact free market policies such as deregulation, real privatization and supply side tax cuts so that the existing money supply would be chasing an ever increasing supply of goods and services. This is what I pray for, but Congress gives us just the opposite, more spending and more government intervention in the economy. They will probably put lipstick on a pig by calling the final legislation, which is nearly identical to the previous failed deal, something that sounds appealing to the taxpayer. The new congressional deal being discussed in Washington is supposed to be a compromise, but the publicly available facts suggest that it is a compromise between those that want to spend as much as they want and those who want to spend even more. The only cuts are the $6 billion in remaining COVID emergency money, which most Americans think is already over and a good number of Americans think is actually very harmful spending in the first place. In any case, it represents a small fraction of 1% of the budget. If you accidentally dropped a penny out of your purse, you would lose a greater percentage of your cash than these so-called cuts, but this is money that they will spend someplace else. The other cut is to the IRS budget, but that is only a small cut to the massive increase the IRS was supposed to get from Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. That money will no doubt be given back to the IRS sometime after the election, and the IRS will probably get even more enhanced powers to shake down the taxpayer. No, this is no budget cutting. All spending will go on as planned by this compromise. This is spending that has greatly increased in the last couple of years after it had already been growing at a fast pace for many, many years. It also does nothing to control deficits or the national debt. In fact, it is an agreement to take the debt ceiling off of the table for at least a couple of years. This is an agreement to continue to spend and borrow as if there are no negative consequences for those who live and work in the productive economy. This is exactly the way they look at it. Their primary concern is to get reelected in November, and that means not upsetting the beneficiaries of your tax dollars, the welfare complex, the military spy complex, federal employees, retirees and veterans, social security and Medicare beneficiaries. The list goes on and on. They also do not want to shut down the government before the election because those people will surely vote against them while many taxpayers have to be at work. Rome didn't burn in a day. They offered citizens bread and circuses. Today the U.S. is on fire. It is already burning. It too offers citizens bread and circuses, but our democracy also gives us feel good legislation titles for their arsonist acts.