I suppose I was naive not to realize something like this would happen. Apparently, after destroying a budget surplus projected in the tens of billions of dollars, and having his party comrades fatten themselves at the public trough with "earmarks" for pet projects that spanned from the ridiculous to the absurd, George Bush has become a devotee of balanced budgets. Quite apart from the absurdity of George Bush calling on Democrats in Congress to rein in spending a day before they even assume power and get themselves organized; quite apart from Goerge Bush talking about balanced budgets when he has yet to submit one; quite apart from the question of why no one in the mainstream media has yet to ask the simple question as to why anyone should take anything this man says seriously. Quite apart from these questions - does the President actually think he has enough of a bully pulpit left, with his approval ratings hovering just above the non-existent for months and months to get the Democrats in Congress to take him seriously?
Suddenly, Bush remembers he is a Republican. Republicans used to like balanced budgets, especially when there was nothing they could actually do about balancing them. When they had power, they complained about the actual tax and fiscal discipline necessary to achieve them - with a few exceptions of course. Remember Bill Clinton's "Biggest Tax Hike in History"? It wasn't, of course. Ronald Reagan signed that in 1984 after Congress reformed the Social Security system. The point is - that is one of the things necessary to restoring a little fiscal sanity - if you want to play (at war, at traveling to the moon and beyond, at all the things left undone in the wake of the Iraqi blackhole sucking all the political energy from Washington) you have to pay. That's all there is to it.
Were I Speaker Pelosi (it is so nice to type that), I would politely thank the President for his input, then go about doing what I was doing as if it had never happened (kind of like what Bush did with the ISG report). Were I pressed, say by Tim Russert or Wolf Blitzer, I might mention the lack of Congressional discipline that left Executive Branch spending plans (not all of them, just nine; out of eleven) sitting in Congress, unloved, unmourned, and no doubt a sight for attempted Republican snarking in the upcoming Congress. I would also quote blogger Parklife (see link to the right): "Republicans have the moral authority of rats in the NYC subway."
What more needs to be said, really?
Virtual Tin Cup
