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| Senator Alan Simpson |
“If you hear a 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 just sparrow belch in the midst of the typhoon. That’s about six, eight, ten 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.”
The only thing Simpson is wrong about is he seems optimistic that Republicans can come up with six, eight, or ten percent. They are far from those numbers with their meager $100 billion in savings they continue to promise from the Speaker's mouth at CPAC. Why is it, with all the bad economic news, these Republicans who claimed to be conservatives going to Washington to save our Republic from the federal debt can only come up with $100 billion, and even then it's like pulling teeth to get them to this point.
Don't you feel like our new Congress is straight from Idiocracy? We have a $14 trillion deficit and they feel $100 billion is fiscally responsible.
Put your Congressman in this scene and substitute Brawndo for national debt and this limited amount of spending cuts they are proposing. All the while Rand Paul is proposing half a trillion in spending cuts.
There is something that happens when politicians get to Washington. They quickly lose their common sense. Did you know that $100 billion equal approximately nine days of government spending? I'd expect better results from spraying Brawdo on the crops than these guys in Washington making any serious dents to the national debt.
So what happens when people get to Washington? I would imagine it's like anything. Personal interests suddenly get in the way. It's about protecting their jobs and getting reelected, and therefore nothing is going to change. Here's what I mean, if a Congressman says he is fed up and gets elected to Congress looks at cutting the budget, and lets say military cuts are up for debate, there is this little voice inside the politician's head that keeps reminding him about reelection. That politician knows the budget must be cut, but doesn't have the testicular fortitude to make the cuts because jobs and money sent to his district will be affected, which means instead of doing the right thing and making the cuts, the politician begins worrying about their reelection chances once they go back to the district and ask to be reelected.
That's why, as we are now seeing with the Republicans who aren't willing to make serious cuts to the deficit, we are really seeing these politicians who promised so much now maintain this creature known as the federal leviathan. Therefore, they make sound bites the equivalent of a sparrow's belch that may sound good to the average voter, but does little but maintain the status quo Washington has become known for. It's really sad at this point.
Rather than listen to Boehner, the Republicans need to back up and hear what Senator Simpson was really saying. He sees through these efforts of the new Republican House, and soon the American people will to if the GOP doesn't get it together. At least Rand Paul gets it in the Senate, so all hope isn't gone.
