Any day now Jim Bunning will toss this town a middle-finger salute and, like Davy Crockett, strongly suggest that we can all just go park ourselves in Hades while he happily strolls off into the sunshine to enjoy a real life.
Love him or hate him, at least the Hall of Fame former Phillies hurler has exposed an ugly truth about how America is governed these days. He simply challenged Congress to do what it promised just a few short weeks ago – stop spending money it doesn’t have.
All Bunning had to say was “I object” to a unanimous consent request to spend $10 billion on unemployment benefits, health insurance subsidies, highway and mass transit construction projects, and a bunch of other activities funded with another blizzard of dollars borrowed from China.
Under Senate rules, if no senator objected, the $10 billion would be approved, no muss, no fuss, no recorded vote, and no nagging worries about the $13 trillion national debt or the $1.4 trillion deficit.
The problem was Pay-Go, legislation just enacted under which Congress promised that it would never again increase federal spending in one program without first cutting spending by an equal or greater amount in another place.
President Obama was so enthusiastic about Pay-Go that he proclaimed, “Now Congress will have to pay for what it spends, just like everybody else.”
Not really. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid forgot about complying with Pay-Go before submitting the $10 billion spending request. After all, it was an “emergency measure,” so why take the time to find $10 billion from somewhere else in the $4 trillion federal budget to pay for it?
Just keep your mouth shut and let Harry and the boys dump another $10 billion in freedom-robbing debt on our kids. China certainly won’t object. They love helping us spend ourselves into a fiscal pit from which we might never escape.
Publicly, Democrats were outraged by Bunning, but privately they were loving it. As Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland put it, “This is part of the wake up call for Americans that Republicans are abusing the rules in the Senate.”
Bunning relented after enduring five days of scorn and insults from colleagues and endless fatuous questions from so-called journalists who in reporting the Kentucky senator’s obdurateness couldn’t be bothered to tell readers about Pay-Go.
All of which raises a question: How can politicians like Reid and Van Hollen keep a straight face while voting for Pay-Go, then acting as if it doesn’t exist? Look no further than just-censured-by-his-12- D.C. Council-colleagues Marion Barry for the answer.
The former Mayor-for-Life has nine political lives, enabling him to survive endless corruption scandals, a conviction on drug charges, multiple bouts of public drunkenness, rampant allegations of kickbacks and bribes, repeated flings with women-not-his-wife, charges of incompetence, etc. etc. etc.
But Barry keeps coming back because, as he said after winning the 1978 Democratic mayoral primary, “I am a situationist, I do what is necessary for the situation.”
So goes Obama, Reid, and company. People worried about exploding federal spending and debt? Hey, we pass Pay-Go. Unemployment benefits about to expire? Forget Pay-Go and pass a $10 billion “emergency measure.” Do “what is necessary for the situation.”
Friends, we are governed by a Congress full of Barrys. And we elected them.
Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott’s Copy Desk blog on washingtonexaminer.com.
