Chutzpah Personified
Rep. Steny Hoyer, (D-MD), and George Miller, (D-CA), had an op-ed in Thursday morning’s WSJ that is as filled with hypocrisy as any op-ed I’ve ever read. It didn’t take them long to launch into their hypocrisy:
In recent years, America’s fiscal story has been one of steady decline, from record surpluses to record deficits. In 2001, the federal government had a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. Today, we are looking at a fiscal year 2009 deficit of $1.7 trillion.
A number of factors have brought us to this cash-strapped point, including reckless tax cuts, the cost of two wars, entitlement programs that have grown on autopilot, and the necessary, though costly, efforts to get our economy out of recession. But by far the worst decision was the abandonment in the Bush years of the principle that our country should pay for what it buys. It’s time to learn from that error and establish that principle in law.
President Obama has made the pay-as-you-go rule, a.k.a. “paygo”, a central part of his campaign for fiscal responsibility. Under paygo, Congress is compelled to find savings for the dollars it spends. In the 1990s, paygo proved to be one of our most valuable tools for climbing out of a budgetary hole. As President Obama put it earlier this month, “It is no coincidence that this rule was in place when we moved…to record surpluses in the 1990s, and that when this rule was abandoned, we returned to record deficits that doubled the national debt.”
First off, PAYGo doesn’t compel Congress “to find savings for the dollars it spends.” In Speaker Pelosi’s House of Representatives, PAYGo’s requirements are met with a job-killing tax increase. What’s insulting is that these jackasses are now preaching fiscal responsibility after rushing through a stimulus bill that (a) they didn’t read and (b) that was at least half pork, after passing a super-sized omnibus bill and after passing President Obama’s budget, which will cause $9,300,000,000,000 in additional debt.
Mssrs. Hoyer and Miller lecturing people on fiscal restraint is akin to O.J. Simpson lecturing people on family values. It’s insulting in the extreme. Here’s another hypocritisy-filled paragraph:
Democrats, on the other hand, understand that we owe it to our fiscal future to pay our bills up-front. As soon as our party took back Congress in 2007, we made the principle of paying for what we buy part of the House rules. To be sure, Congress hasn’t always lived up to that commitment, usually when the Senate rejected House bills that were paid for. But that is all the more reason to give paygo the force of law. On Mr. Obama’s behalf, we have introduced legislation to keep Congress, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, from sacrificing our fiscal health to the political pressures of the moment.
It’s true that the Democrats made PAYGo part of the House Rules. It’s just that they’ve ignored that rule since installing it. Could Rep. Hoyer and Rep. Miller pass a lie detector test if I asked them whether PAYGo rules were followed when they filled out their special interest groups’ wish list, aka ARRA?
Let’s hear them explain how that bill left us $787,000,000,000 deeper in debt while following PAYGo. Ditto with passing President Obama’s budget.
It’s disgusting that these miscreants are lecturing us about fiscal responsibility. They’ve never met a tax increase they didn’t vote for. The only time that they’ll vote against increasing spending money this session is when missile defense appropriations is the subject.
Fiscal responsibility will take much more work, from controlling the spiraling health-care costs that consume more and more of our GDP and budget each year to reforming our rapidly-growing entitlement programs. It is daunting work, but it can begin here. And if we fail to take even this step, to hold to a rule of responsibility that governs even the smallest family budgets, then we are in deeper trouble than even the worst pessimists feared.
Let’s see if the Democrats say no to the second stimulus bill that President Obama is thinking about. Let’s see these Democrats say that they’ve spent too much already. Let’s see if Pelosi’s minions exercise fiscal restraint rather than just flapping their gums about it.
The Democrats’ record is replete with proof that they’re comfortable talking about saying no. The Democrats’ record is thin in actually saying no to foolish spending. Their votes for ARRA is proof of where their heart truly lies.
Talk is cheap. This time, we won’t trust the Democrats until they take action to curb spending.
Technorati Tags: Spending, Fiscal Restraint, PAYGo, President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, George Miller, ARRA, Deficits
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
June 29th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
To be fair, the Congress was controlled for years by Republicans and spent us into fiscal oblivion, too. It was a Republican president’s TARP that was first passed (albeit by a Donk Congress), with the aid of several Republicans. I hardly think carping at Democrats is not without its own hypocrisy.
That said, your post may only highlight the D.C. Hypocrite Express, run by both Democrats and Republicans. Neither is without sin, and, for the most part, very few are worth wasting votes on.