With the release of the President's proposed budget, we're being treated to yet another round of partisan bickering and bitch slapping about who's gonna do what to address the budget deficit and the federal debt.
And the truth is nobody, save maybe Ron Paul (who's been talking to an empty room forever), is prepared to do shit about it. I watched one of the newly elected Tea Party house members tie himself in knots yesterday trying to evade committing himself to a substantive position on virtually anything. Amazing how quick the campaign rhetoric gets tossed overboard once these guys realize they're no longer a candidate, they're an incumbent. And lest anyone accuse me of grinding a political ax here, the democrats are no better.
So I enjoyed listening to retired Senator Alan Simpson, who served as co-chair on the President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (whose recommendations, by the way, were spot on and, thus, ignored or reviled by conservatives and liberals alike), offer some plain speak yesterday on Candy Crowley's CNN show:
"But the next time you hear... a career politician get up and say, "I know we can get this done; we're going to get rid of all earmarks, all waste, fraud, and abuse, all foreign aid, Air Force one, all congressional pensions," that's a sparrow's belch in the midst of a typhoon. That's about six, eight, 10 percent of where we are.
So I'm waiting for the politician to get up and say, there's only one way to do this, you dig into the big four, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and defense. And anybody giving you anything different than that, you want to walk out the door, stick your finger down your throat and give them the green weenie (ph)."
Would that Obama or Boehner had the balls to say the same thing.
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Originally Posted by montanadave
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