Turning Cowardly Political Foolishness into Spineful Seriousness — Where Does One Start?

© 2011 Peter Free

 

19 February 2011

 

 

It is easy to get side-tracked doing just about anything, unless one has the ability to focus and prioritize — Congress and the Executive have neither

 

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank’s weekend column today provides a brilliantly-cobbled vignette of Congressional foolishness as an entry to my topic question:

 

If we want to cut the budget:

 

(a) should we start with small (but obviously wasteful) trifles,

 

or

 

(b) should we go after painful (not so wasteful) big stuff that actually impacts the budget deficit?

 

Milbank makes it clear that Congress has chosen the Trifles Option.

 

Like pigs rooting for truffles, our fearful pretend-leaders have decided to tip-toe the Avoidance Dance:

 

To say that our lawmakers are carping at trifles gives them too much credit. In fact, they are carping at carp.

 

"Asian carp [are] one of the world's most rampant invasive species,” . . . Dave Camp . . . proclaimed on the House floor, 35 hours into the debate over budget cuts.

 

That certainly stinks for Great Lakes fish and Great Lakes fishermen. But if you think the federal budget will be balanced on the backs of the Asian carp, you're all wet.

 

The whole exercise is less about improving the nation's fiscal balance than about parochial concerns and political volleys.

 

© 2011 Dana Milbank, Serious budget cutting? The House has other fish to fry, Washington Post (20 February 2011) (paragraphs split)

 

 

Milbank documents arguments about eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood, federal education, foreign aid, health care reform, financial regulations, and environmental rules.

 

Darrell Issa opposed spending for researching the impact of yoga on hot flashes and condom-use skills in men.  He wondered about the validity of studying video games’ effect on the elderly’s mental health.

 

Dan Burton went on record as being against paying to keep populations of wild horses and burros in check.

 

Some representatives suggested not repairing the family portion of the White House, preventing the Secretary of Treasury from flying, and eliminating the President’s use of federally-funded teleprompters.  (Who were these idiots?)

 

Betty McCollum thought it would be a good idea to stop spending on military bands and NASCAR sponsorship.

 

 

Even if the whole proposed $60 billion is cut, it won’t put more than a raindrop back into the deficit well

 

As Milbank pointed out, the debate in Congress has been limited to the 13 percent of the budget called “non-defense discretionary spending.”

 

Even if the President were to approve the $60 billion in cuts that Republicans propose in this area, I calculate that the total reduction would amount to only 4 percent of the $1.5 trillion deficit.

 

 

Milbank added that these thoughtlessly-integrated budget lops will cause “chaos and throws hundreds of thousands of people out of work.”

 

 

 

So what are our yellow-bellied, name-only, leaders really doing?

 

They are attacking small voting constituencies that don’t have the clout to much affect national elections.

 

It is easier, for example, to eliminate carp control (a genuinely serious problem in the Great Lakes region), than it is to cut Medicare and Social Security.

 

Similarly, it takes less spine to criticize Pentagon spending on NASCAR (prominent in the South, from where much of the military comes), than to tell the nation’s aging baby boomers that we are going to have to reduce our expectations.

 

 

Seeing the big picture means that saving a dollar outweighs saving a penny

 

It is easy to make aspects of the budget look foolishly wasteful.  It is difficult, for example, to defend national spending on condom-use skills or researching yoga’s effect on hot flashes.

 

But:

 

When the ship is sinking fast, are you going to bail with (a) a teaspoon or (b) a 10,000 gallon-per-minute bilge pump?

 

When real unemployment is somewhere between 9 and 18 percent, is it wise to cut programs that keep people employed?

 

 

Congress and the President — co-dependents in cowardice and ineptitude

 

Most of these people couldn’t find their way out of a one-acre forest, while being chased by an emaciated house cat, on a warm day.