Nicole Russel's Excellent Adventure in Vague Budget Complaining

USA Today: Where "Do Your Research" Means "Trust Me, Bro"

Today I read Nicole Russel’s USA Today column, written on 17 March, and I need to start with the one thing she gets right: Congress should face consequences when they fail at their most basic job. When politicians get paid while TSA agents work without a paycheck, that is hypocrisy. That is an abuse of power. That much is correct, and it is about time someone from the conservative side admitted it.

”Grossly Expensive” Says Woman Who Provides Zero Numbers

But that is where my agreement ends, because once again, Russel makes sweeping claims without showing receipts. She writes that the federal government is “grossly expensive, costing taxpayers way too much money.” What services, specifically, are grossly expensive? She does not say. She does not provide a single budget number, not one agency breakdown, no comparison to other countries, nothing. This is the kind of vague hand-waving that sounds good to people who already agree with you but convinces no one who actually wants to think.

Let us be clear: if you claim something costs too much, you have to say what it costs and why that number is too high. Otherwise, you are just making noise.

The SAVE Act: A Solution in Search of a Problem That Russel Half-Explains

Russel mentions the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, the SAVE Act, and calls it “uneducated nonsense” that Republicans cannot pass. She is right that it is nonsense, but she misses why it exists in the first place. The SAVE Act would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Here is what Russel does not adequately explain: noncitizen voting is already illegal in federal elections. This is not a claim that requires external research; it is basic United States law. The real impact of laws like the SAVE Act is making it harder for eligible American citizens who lack easy access to birth certificates or passports to register. That is the point. It is not about stopping fraud, which is already illegal and extremely rare. It is about stopping certain people from voting.

Russel writes that Republicans “won’t bring it to the Senate floor and let it filibuster to exhaustion.” She presents this as cowardice. I see it as strategy. Republican leadership knows that if the bill actually came to a vote, they would have to defend why they are making it harder for specific groups of Americans to register. They would rather blame Democrats than face that conversation.

Accountability for Me but Not for Thee: The Congressional Way

The core problem Russel identifies is real: Congress has no immediate consequences for failure. When they shut down the government, they still get paid. When they miss deadlines, nothing happens to them personally. This is a structural flaw in how we have designed our government. But Russel’s solution seems to be “make government smaller,” which does not actually solve the accountability problem. A smaller government can be just as incompetent and unaccountable as a large one.

What we need is real accountability. Russel mentions the No Budget, No Pay Act introduced by Senator Rick Scott. According to her column, this act would ensure members of Congress do not receive a paycheck during a government shutdown, and Democrats blocked it. If this is true, it is worth investigating further, but Russel provides no link to the bill text or vote record.

The Irony of Voting for Politicians Who Promise to Break Things

Russel calls the federal government “too large, too incompetent.” Maybe. But incompetence is not a function of size. It is a function of who we elect and what we let them get away with. If voters keep sending the same people to Washington and expecting different results, that is not the government’s fault. That is ours.

The irony Russel misses is that the people who complain most about government incompetence are often the same ones who vote for politicians who promise to break government, then act surprised when it breaks. You cannot starve an agency of resources, attack its mission, fill it with unqualified political appointees, and then complain it does not work well.

Show Me the Money or Stop Talking About Costs

Here is what I want: politicians who actually believe in governing, not just winning. I want a Congress that faces the same consequences as the people they represent. And I want columnists who show their work instead of just invoking anger and hoping no one asks for the receipts.

Russel got one thing right. That is one more than usual. But we deserve better than half-baked criticism and vague complaints about costs without numbers. We deserve arguments that can survive fact-checking. Until conservatives like Russel start providing those, they are just adding to the noise they claim to oppose.

Should you crave the experience of reading a columnist who correctly identifies congressional hypocrisy then immediately pivots to unsubstantiated claims about government size, your journey begins here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/03/17/tsa-lines-airport-blame-congress-shutdown/89181214007/

Works Cited

Russel, N. (2026, March 17). When will TSA be back to normal? When Congress does its job. *USA Today*. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/03/17/tsa-lines-airport-blame-congress-shutdown/89181214007/