“Now, Congress will have to pay for what it spends, just like everybody else,” saith Obama in his weekly radio address last month.“After a decade of profligacy, the American people are tired of politicians who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk when it comes to fiscal responsibility. It’s easy to get up in front of the cameras and rant against exploding deficits. What’s hard is actually getting deficits under control. But that’s what we must do.” (See: Politico post.)
As Steve Martin used to say, EXCUSE ME!!!
When this “bedrock principle” was raised by Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky that Congress could only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere, to ask where the $10 Billion in extended unemployment and Cobra benefits was being paid for, the Democrats were outraged and foot-in-mouth Vice President Joe Biden lambasted the Republicans as inhumane!
As Jay Ambrose of the OC Register points out, you would think that the Democratic Congress could find a measly $10 Billion in all the pork they’ve barbecued in recent legislation.
“The special sadness in all of this is the hypocrisy of a president who just recently sold paygo as a mighty step toward fiscal responsibility. Not only was Biden then turned loose on an honest man trying to make paygo work, but the whole paygo law is by and large a con game to begin with. It can be waived with flimsy excuse and seems to exempt virtually every other budgetary sentence that begins with a capital and ends with a period. Even if it were religiously heeded, the budget could be swamped by the costs of the exceptions.”
I cannot say it any better: “It’s time to start worrying, fellow Americans. Really worrying.”
Tom Motherway