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    Democrats Behaving Badly

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    James Shott
    This document discusses the debate around government spending cuts and a potential government shutdown. It argues that Democrats have behaved hysterically over modest proposed spending cuts and that a short-term shutdown would likely have minimal impact. It also asserts that long-term, government spending needs to be reduced substantially to address the large budget deficit.

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    Democrats Behaving Badly

    Uploaded by

    James Shott
    12 views2 pages
    This document discusses the debate around government spending cuts and a potential government shutdown. It argues that Democrats have behaved hysterically over modest proposed spending cuts and that a short-term shutdown would likely have minimal impact. It also asserts that long-term, government spending needs to be reduced substantially to address the large budget deficit.

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    Some Democrats react hysterically to efforts to cut spending.

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    This document discusses the debate around government spending cuts and a potential government shutdown. It argues that Democrats have behaved hysterically over modest proposed spending cuts and that a short-term shutdown would likely have minimal impact. It also asserts that long-term, government spending needs to be reduced substantially to address the large budget deficit.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    12 views2 pages

    Democrats Behaving Badly

    Uploaded by

    James Shott
    This document discusses the debate around government spending cuts and a potential government shutdown. It argues that Democrats have behaved hysterically over modest proposed spending cuts and that a short-term shutdown would likely have minimal impact. It also asserts that long-term, government spending needs to be reduced substantially to address the large budget deficit.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    [Type text]

    Democrats behaving badly: Hysteria on display over


    spending cuts
    As last week progressed the prospect of a government shutdown loomed, and some
    Americans had a hissy-fit. Demagogues did their level best to make it seem as if the
    world would end if the government was shut down, although not long ago a
    snowstorm in DC shut things down for a couple of days, and no one seemed to
    notice.

    The Heritage Foundation provided some insight on just what a government


    shutdown really means: “During the last shutdowns, only 20 percent of Washington-
    area federal contracts were suspended, as were visa and passport applications,
    bankruptcy cases, and firearm applications. About 368 national parks closed. But
    the Department of Defense, power grid maintenance, border patrol, Coast Guard,
    air traffic controllers, inpatient and emergency outpatient medical care, and other
    vital services continued.”

    Not so bad, really. The world didn’t stop spinning. Some inconveniences, to be sure,
    but you know what? Sometimes stuff happens, and we have to behave like adults
    when it does.

    Still, even though our government is grossly inefficient, wastes tons of taxpayer
    money, and needs a major overhaul, there is something unseemly about having it
    “shut down.”

    Customarily, government operates year-to-year on revenue/spending plan, a


    budget, the process for which is guided by a set of procedures laid out in the
    Congressional Budget Act of 1974, beginning with the President’s annual budget
    request, then action by Congress.

    But not for FY2011.

    Ask Congressional Democrats why no budget was enacted. At the time it should
    have been proposed, debated and approved they held a solid majority in both
    houses of Congress. They must have been busy doing other things.

    So, dereliction of duty by the Congressional majority means the government has
    kept running through a series of short-term Continuing Resolutions that fund
    government functions, essential and non-essential alike, and whether we can afford
    them or not. Along the way many members of the Democrat majorities were
    replaced in the November election by new faces that ran on fiscal irresponsibility,
    because voters understand that we must dramatically cut spending, and said so
    loudly on Election Day.

    Congressional Democrats, however, still haven’t gotten the message and would
    prefer not to make any cuts. When pressed they grudgingly agreed to cut spending
    by $38 billion, which sounds like a lot. But this year we will spend $1.65 trillion more
    [Type text]

    than we collect, and a cut of $38 billion is comparable to cutting 38 cents off of a
    $165 invoice.

    And for some reason, everyone is celebrating.

    And after having created this crisis by not passing a budget, Congressional
    Democrats like DC Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, and New York Rep. Louise
    Slaughter adopted hysteria and hyperbole as their mode of response to Republican
    efforts to tie spending cuts to the Continuing Resolution to keep the government
    running. Rep. Norton shrieked, “We are absolutely outraged. This is the functional
    equivalent of bombing innocent civilians.” And Rep. Slaughter: “In 1994, people
    were elected simply to come here to kill the National Endowment for the Arts, now
    they’re here to kill women,” she ranted. (Reports that they held their breath and
    stomped their feet could not be confirmed.)

    Did alien beings take control of these two women? In response to these absurd
    performances, a corps (not corpse!) of psychiatrists has been dispatched to the
    Nation’s Capital to try to calm down the frenzied pair, or failing that, find a couple of
    spare beds for them in the nervous hospital.

    Such gross exaggerations are out of bounds and likely reflect the disdain with which
    these elected public servants regard their bosses’ demand for spending cuts.

    What we see today is the predictable, perhaps unavoidable result of government


    giving money to segments of the private sector, a situation where government
    largesse has reached an unsustainable level, and must be stopped. And the reaction
    of the recipients of that largesse and their government enablers is loud, angry and,
    as illustrated above, sometimes irrational. It would have been better to not have
    given these hand-outs in the first place than to have to stop giving them because
    they are not economically feasible.

    And that would have been the constitutionally appropriate course. Government
    should not subsidize private sector entities; not oil companies, green energy
    companies, farmers, Planned Parenthood, banks, public broadcasting, or anything
    else. That’s what is wrong here, and such imprudence was not contemplated by the
    Founders, who figured future Americans would be smarter than we have turned out
    to be.

    However, Democrats and Republicans were able to find a funding plan that was
    mutually acceptable and ward off a shutdown for a few days, leaving the details of
    funding the government through September 30 for this week. Unfortunately, the
    spending cuts agreed to are far too modest to make a noticeable dent in the deficit.

    No sensible person believes we can continue spending billions more than we take
    in. We have to stop that, and immediately begin to reduce spending to a sensible
    level, like 18 percent of GDP. That would produce a budget of $2.63 trillion, and if
    we can’t run a constitutionally proper and efficient government on that amount, we
    ought to ask Great Britain to take us back.

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