One of my favorite post-election rituals is exploring how the political press conducts the interviews they should have done before Election Day after the results are in from Election Day.
‘Tis a joy!
Example – a certain Christiane Amanpour of ABC News’ This Week scored a post-election interview with Kentucky’s new Tea Party Senator-elect Rand Paul.
Ms. Amanpour asked Paul what he’s going to do.
Senator-elect Paul said he plans to cut spending “all across the board.”
Amanpour pressed Paul for specifics, but he doubled-down with "I'm going to look at every program, every program."
Senator-elect Paul, who has a seat on the Senate Budget Committee on his holiday wish list, then said he would freeze federal hiring and reduce the number of federal employees by 10% along with the remaining government employees' wages by 10%.
Where he came up with 10% remains unclear…just as how he intends to reduce the national debt by cutting spending without raising taxes remains hazy as a motherfucker.
Paul then turned to those entitlement programs…you know, those pesky spending programs like Social Security and Medicaid that no one thought to ask his happy to be nappy ass about until after the election.
He was clear about not wanting to impact those folks who are currently using those entitlement programs…which makes me think that someone may need some Libertarian re-education, lest the lure of future electability trump the will to mercilessly hack government to death.
Anyhoo…Senator-elect Paul is pondering raising the retirement age and changing the entire structure of social security, but just for folks 55 years of age and under.
Paul then made the case that our debt isn’t a revenue problem but rather a spending problem…which reminds me of when I first faced the challenge of living life odd of my paycheck and created a budget that kicked major ass except it neglected to factor in my being human and needing food.
Wince.
But my favorite portion of the interview was this from Paul…
"You need to ask of every program – and we take no program off the table."
"Can it be downsized? Can it be privatized? Can it be made smaller? ... We need to get our fiscal house in order.”
And I can’t help but remember all those folks at the town hall who shouted that they don’t want government healthcare or government involved in their lives.
“Can it be downsized?”
They ought to sleep well knowing that Senator-elect Paul is already working hard…
“Can it be privatized?”
…to radically alter social security by privatizing the hell out of it…
“Can it be made smaller?”
…and Lawd knows Tea Party supporters should find comfort knowing that Paul then plans to starve that horrible unpopular government healthcare atrocity called Medicaid to death.
And this is Paul being vague.
Blink.
7 comments:
Well, corporate America's favorite way to cut spending is to eliminate jobs. Guess there's no way our Congressional Representatives can be expected to do that. It seems to me that Boehner has a staff of about thirty with a salary expense of over $720,000. I can't resist mentioning a total of 290 trips approved for over $497,000. Throw in the cost of their retirement and health coverage, it starts to look like big bucks for just one office, and there's 535 of those in Congress.
No way could I manage a conversation with that person.
I still haven't gotten beyond the point where I just want to bang my head against a wall.
I'm not sure I understand how unemployment will go down if you cut government jobs by 10%. The private sector has more than demonstrated that it is unable to provide jobs. Wouldn't our unemployment percentage also rise significantly? Maybe by 8%- putting us at about 17% unemployment. I don't see how that's good.
Also, when you reduce the pay of all federal employees, would it not effect pay rates in the private sector? Technically, the private sector and the federal government compete for similar employees, actually at similar rates when you take benefits into account. If you reduce the lure of government employment, it would also reduce the amount the private sector has to compensate for the same job, thereby reducing the employee's monthly income. I don't see how that would really be good for the middle class, seeing as many of the jobs occupied by the middle class are government employment, be that state or federal.
When they start talking about halving the defense budget, then I'll start to believe they kinda might be serious about shrinking government. Till then? It's all horseshit.
Emily Litella comes to mind: "What's all this about Ru Paul running on the libertine ticket in Kentucky? They'll never elect a libertine in Kentucky... What? RAND Paul? Oh. Nevermind."
This bozo is a Senator now. Despite his murky grasp of what that means, the Senate as a whole will be forced to play footsie with him because of the real damage he could do to the country as a single senator. It is a sad day when your hopes for avoiding a Government shutdown are in the hands of Mitch McConnell and his willingness and ability to talk sense into the likes of Rand Paul. And for that matter Jim DeMint.
-Doug in Oakland
I'm surprised that Rand Paul even mentioned cutting military spending. I'm not sure I heard the words "military", "Iraq", or "Afghanistan" during the entire campaign in my state.
We spend about $3000 each second in Iraq. My furlough last year was 0.5 Iraq-seconds. One year of a teacher laid off from my city's middle school would be 20 Iraq-seconds. The $3.3 million that our school district had to cut is about 18 Iraq-minutes. Et cetera.
If Tea Partiers can oppose government "intrusion" in health care, then I don't want to have to pay into wars of aggression.
Wait wait..
Cutting jobs? Sure, Federal jobs, but cutting jobs?
And they want to stimulate the economy?
Gee... nothing like having a job to encourage spending!
Yeah, I started hitting the wall after that.
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