The first cut is the cheapest

You may have missed the news. With all the headlines being reserved for covering Al Franken’s stealing of the Minnesota Senate seat and following Charlie Rangel's ethics violations there probably wasn’t room for this story. Oh, that’s right, major new outlets aren’t covering either of those on the front or any other pages. And they sure aren’t touting the fact that, once again this year, Congress is getting a raise. With, as our Vice-president elect Joe “Jobs is a three letter word” Biden states, the economy tanking and millions of their constituents losing their jobs, the same people telling automotive executives they need to take $1 a year salaries because their companies are losing money will be receiving an additional $4700 a year of taxpayer money. To borrow from those annoying Progressive insurance ads, that’s a whole wardrobe on What Not to Wear or a bunch of “big tricked out name badges”. It is a nice little lagniappe as they say in Louisiana.



The raise amounts to a measly $2.5 million dollars. That’s chump change for a government that spends many times that on pork barrel projects yearly. But the government might be looking to cut their expenditures. Yeah right! The slowdown in the economy has many state governments running in the red. Yeah, blame the economy. States and the Federal government have been running in the red for decades.

In times like these we taxpayers are often asked to dig deep and accept tax increases as a way to balance our government budgets. Bush’s tax breaks for the wealthy are touted as a major contributor to our growing deficit. Unfortunately, like for many global warming alarmists, the facts are not on the tax and spend crowd’s side of the balance sheet.

For you see, there is no shortage of money pouring to the federal coffers. Like the Katrina bloated waters of Lake Pontchartrain filling the gumbo bowl of the Big Easy, Bush’s so-called tax breaks for the rich, like Ronald Reagan’s and John Kennedy’s before him, had money flooding in. Government revenues continue to rise.

Unfortunately, as fast as they are rising, Congress continues to spend like Mardi Gras partiers on Bourbon Street. They are drunk with power and looking for votes by endowing their constituents with pork they same way women at Carnival seek beads with their endowments.

Take a look at these figures from the Congressional Budget Office’s website (sorry it is 2 am and I don't feel like designing a real table here). It shows, in billions of dollars the revenues and outlays of the Federal Government.

Year Revenue Outlay
2001 1,991.4 1,863.2
2002 1,853.4 2,011.2
2003 1,782.5 2,160.1

As fast as revenues are growing, expenditures are outpacing them.

In coming months we undoubtedly will hear talk of stimulus packages, tax increases of all sorts and, dreaded most of all by the suckers of bead covered pork teats, budget cuts. The mammoth proposed stimulus package will add real dollars to our deficit. Dollars we don’t have. The tax increases will be real in that they will take more money for the pockets of all levels of income earners. And the budget cuts will be political double speak that is more nonsensical than a voodoo priestesses chant that you can hear for $25 off Rampart Street in the French Quarter.

For you see, a budget cut in government parlance is really just a cut in the proposed amount of increase. There really isn’t a cut at all. In 2006, the Federal Government gave schools $12.7 billion for Title One programs. Bush froze that amount in his 2007 budget and this was referred to as a budget cut. Government spending on education rose from $786 million to $797 million between the two years. Damn GW Bush and his lack of concern for the children. Just once I’d like to see a government cut that actually reduces the amount we are spending!

Tax increases aren’t a solution and tax cuts aren’t the problem. The problem is a government comprised of spendaholics and Keynsian pump primers. Every morning during the pre-Lenten party the street washers move up and down Bourbon and in the light of day it is amazing to see the aftermath of an out of control drunkfest attended by people whose only thought was of their own Bacchanalian experience. I hope that when we as a nation finally “see the light” regarding our governments excess and similar focus on today’s desires that we have enough capitalist freedom left to employ our own set of street cleaners to once again put a shine our economy.

S2