It’s debatable whether the lame-duck spending legislation is the “ugliest omnibus bill ever,” as the WSJ put it, but as we’ve been saying night after night, it’s a very bad bill. It’s an unnecessary bill, and it’s an anti-growth bill.  

It’s a bill that encourages inflation, and maybe — worst of all — it’s a bill that betrays the millions of voters who elected a Republican House that was completely left out of the Schumer-Pelosi-McConnell deliberations.

We don’t even actually know the spending totals in the bill yet. The CBO has a preliminary scorecard that shows $1.76 trillion, but that doesn’t include a number of items — including the Ukraine supplemental. By the way, it’s very bad budget practice not to get a full CBO scorecard regarding spending revenues, deficits, and debt.  

Like everything done in the dark smoke-filled room, it’s bad. As usual, Elon Musk got it right, tweeting: “I’m in favor of a small spending bill to keep things running, but common sense suggests that it be the least amount required through the holidays. Railroading through a giant spending bill that almost no one has read is unlikely to be in the best interests of the people.” 

I love quoting Mr. Musk, because he’s not only the smartest guy in the room, but he has good common sense. If the GOP senators had similar common sense, they would’ve worked with Representative Kevin McCarthy to put together a C.R. to get through the holidays and then let the new GOP House “take a swing at it,” as Senator Blackburn told us a few nights ago. 

But no, Senator McConnell has to go out and say, “I’m pretty proud of the fact that with a Democratic president, Democratic House, and Democratic Senate, we were able to achieve through this omnibus spending bill essentially all of our priorities.” 

All of our priorities, senator? Really? Did you forget about the Republican House that begins in 13 days? Did no one brief you on those election results?  

By the way, before we get too deep into all the goofy spending in this monstrosity, I want to repeat that there’s a big corporate tax hike embedded in this bill. Namely, the R&D tax credit will move from full expensing to amortization over five years. This jacks up corporate taxes by $35 billion — actually starting in this calendar year.  

Plus, companies will have a less generous interest deduction for corporate debt, and can only write off 80 percent of their capital investment — down from 100 percent since the Trump tax bill was enacted in 2018. A very big hat tip to Strategas’s Washington policy analyst, Dan Clifton, for writing about this.  

Plus, of course, the prior Democratic IRA bill slaps on a 15 percent corporate minimum tax and a truly stupid 1 percent tax on stock buybacks.  

The point is, Republicans, or at least the Senate version, pretend to be opposed to tax hikes. Yet in this monstrosity omnibus, they didn’t lift one pinky ring finger to prevent tax hikes, which will retard investment, productivity, jobs, real wages, and blue-collar family incomes.  

So this is not just a monster spending hike bill. This is also a tax hike bill that Mr. McConnell is so proud of.   

Other Republicans are trying to sell this loser on the basis of a 2 percent reduction to the $12.6 billion annual IRS budget — but this does nothing about the $80 billion increase already legislated in the fraudulently named “Inflation Reduction Act” for 87,000 new IRS agents.  

In other words, nothing happened. 

There are so many crazy things in this bill we don’t really have the time to go through it. A couple of ironic things: The FBI gets a $600 million increase for all their good work in the Twitter files and lord knows what else. Also, the omnibus includes $410 million for border security in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Oman, but I couldn’t find anything for the southern border of the U.S. Just saying. 

Then, there’s $575 million for family planning to halt population growth that “threatens biodiversity or endangered species,” and another $285 million for family planning in general. Don’t see any family planning money to help protect the rights of the unborn.  

There are also big increases in food stamps, home heating assistance, Pell grants, head start, child care, child nutrition, and WIC, and other aspects of universal guaranteed income with no work requirements. Let me wonder out loud how much emergency Covid assistance is now being built in to the mandatory spending budget baseline increase that makes Mr. McConnell so happy.  

I’m good with the Ukraine assistance aimed at enhanced weapons, but I’m not particularly happy with the $15.5 billion going to economic budgetary and humanitarian support for the Ukrainian government, which has a less than stellar reputation when it comes to corruption.  

I am totally happy with banning TikTok on federal government devices, and I do like improved retirement savings incentives, but I do not like added health care spending on Medicaid — again without work requirements. Or childrens’ health insurance, again without workfare. 

There’s plenty that I’ve left out. I confess I didn’t read the 4,000-page document — and probably never will. I throw up my hands at what my friends in the Republican Senate have done. I don’t get it.  

This is all so counter-productive. This has nothing to do with Republican stewardship of economic prosperity. I know it’s undoubtedly too late, but I will repeat: Save America. Kill the bill.  

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.