Jim Bunning Exposes The PAYGO Farce

Harry Reid protects the pork

PAYGO is already gone. Acronym for pay-as-you-go, PAYGO was signed into law only last week. The bill theoretically requires congress to offset non-discretionary spending with corresponding spending cuts or tax increases. Triumvirs Obama, Reid and Pelosi ballyhooed the legislation as proof of their commitments to fiscal responsibility in government.

Anyone can get religion, but conversions of this magnitude are bound to overwhelm most people’s credulity. Especially anyone who has witnessed the hedonistic spending orgy which all three converts lustily participated in over the last year.

Only the most gullible churchgoer, Ned Flanders perhaps, would accept this pious renouncement of sin at face value. Everyone else had good cause to assume that PAYGO was simply the latest style over substance announcement by which the Obama administration still vainly hopes to fool a few of the people for a week or two.

It didn’t even last that long. KY Senator Jim Bunning exposed PAYGO for the farce that it is in less than a week.

With the ink barely dry on PAYGO, the democratic leadership introduced a stop-gap bill to extend unemployment benefits in certain states. Cost of the bill is $10 billion. Sen Bunning couldn’t seem to find the corresponding $10 billion in spending cuts included in the bill and was nice enough point this out to fiscal responsibility convert Harry Reid. PAYGO, Bunning has been told, does not apply because this is “emergency spending”.

Actually the American people have been told by the Obama administration that all of the spending during the last year was some type of emergency spending. Trillions of dollars in spending without which the country would have supposedly fallen into full blown depression. The type of spending that has pushed the national debt to $14 trillion. The type of reckless spending PAYGO is supposed to prohibit.

This spending is different Reid said, launching into full demagogue mode. “My friends on the other side of the aisle are opposing extending unemployment benefits for people who are out of work.”

Jim Bunning, however, isn’t flinching. The senator is all for the stop-gap bill, he just expects senate democrats to offset the $10 billion cost.

Bunning suggested the Senate simply agree to take the money out of the billions of dollars in unused “stimulus” funds. “If we can’t find $10 billion to pay for something that we all support, we will never pay for anything on the floor of this US Senate. I have offered several ways to do this… None have been successful. We cannot keep adding to the debt. It’s over $14 trillion and going up fast. If the budget that is before us passes, it will add another $1.5 trillion to the debt.”

Nothing doing. Apparently the only way to cover “emergency spending” is by borrowing more money from communist China or turning on the printing presses at the Federal Reserve.

The Chicago School Scam
Emergency spending is a common ploy utilized by fiscally irresponsible legislative bodies from village town councils on up to the US Congress. Barack Obama’s hometown of Chicago was famous for its annual “school crises”. The democratic machine controlled Chicago City Council would spend non-stop throughout the year. Come every August, there was suddenly no funding available to open the schools on time. “Possible School Shutdown Looms” were perennial headlines as the mayor and council would struggle to find someway to keep the tykes in school and teachers paid.

The someway always turned out to be an increase in property taxes. “What could we do? Not open our schools?”

States with liberal governors and legislatures are emulating the Chicago School Scam as they continue to spend their way into oblivion and attempt to rescue the situation by flim flamming the public with pending budget cut horror stories.

There never seems to be anywhere budgets can be cut in these states other than by firing teachers, laying off police officers and firefighters, closing public hospitals or releasing thousands of felons from prison. Not even an ounce of trimable pork fat can ever be found in any of their budgets. But maybe, just maybe, such dire circumstances could narrowly be avoided by regretfully raising taxes and/or increasing fees. Or creating new ones. Again.

The situation is even more ludicrous with the senate’s funding for the stop-gap unemployment benefits. Over $200 billion were blatantly pork barreled into TARP and the Stimulus Package alone. Billions more have surely been earmarked into virtually every other bill passed since Barack Obama took office. But one week into PAYGO, Harry Reid can’t bring himself to eliminate $10 billion dollar of this waste to provide unemployment benefits for 400 thousand Americans.

The only way to PAYGO
The Triumvir didn’t pass PAYGO to balance out their voracious spending programs through corresponding spending cuts. Remember, PAYGO requires congress to offset non-discretionary spending with corresponding spending cuts or tax increases. Bingo

“Yes we raised taxes. But what could we do? Disobey the law?”

Way to PAYGO Mr President