In baseball they call it a brush back pitch, a high hard one. It lets the batter know that they don’t own home plate, and if they try to get too comfortable there they may be inviting a little “chin music.” Jim Bunning, Republican Senator from Kentucky and a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher with a perfect game on his resume, just gave the Democrats a brush back and they don’t like it one bit.
Out of Control Spending
You would have to be Rip Van Winkle not to know that spending is out of control and America is speeding toward bankruptcy. President Obama and Nancy Pelosi have tried to hoodwink the country by implementing what is called “Paygo” short for Pay As You Go. The idea is that you cannot spend money without first funding it either through cutting speding somewhere else or raising taxes. The last element is the real reason Democrats support it, so that they would be “forced” to raise taxes. Here is how the Wall Street Journal described Paygo back in January.
The truth is that paygo is the kind of budget gimmick that gives gimmickry a bad name. As Mr. Obama knows but won’t tell voters, paygo only applies to new or expanded entitlement programs, not to existing programs such as Medicare, this year growing at a 9.2% annual rate. Nor does paygo apply to discretionary spending, set to hit $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2010, or 40% of the budget.
The Democrats passed Paygo to appear fiscally responsible. Jim Bunning merely called them on it. He is not opposed to spending the money. He has the courage, though, to stand up and say, Mr. President we’re broke, and we are accountable to the American people to be good stewards of the money they give us to run this government.
“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 U.S. Senate,” he said. – Jim Bunning, Floor of the U.S. Senate, 3/1/2010
Immediately was heard much wailing an gnashing of teeth, that the lone Republican, had the temerity to challenge the “flexibility” of the Democrats to apply their rules willy nilly to tighten their grip on their power while trying to appear like the kindly nannies they really are. Rules are passed to much fanfare in front of the cameras and then ignored with a scoff or a sneer, when they really mean something.
Gimmicks Instead of Guts
Democrats have proved uncapable of controlling their spending. With the mad push of profligacy that came with winning the Presidency and both houses of Congress with large margins, they now find themselves unable to dial it back without an intervention or a rehabilitation program. So they pass Paygo, and ignore it; convene a debt reduction commission and name Andy Stern of the SEIU union to it. If that is not a clue to what’s coming I don’t know what is. What does a labor union president know about reducing debt? All they know how to do is take someone else’s money and put it in their own pockets, so you can bet their solution to the debt problem is taxing you to the eyeballs.
Rather than the scorn that is being heaped upon him, Senator Bunning deserves our thanks. Find the money first, then spend it. Enough of the IOUs. We cannot afford this liberal spending binge.
Stand strong, Senator, the Tea Party Patriots hear you and help is on the way.









