Are We No Better?

The Democrats have managed to paint Republicans in to a corner in regards to the national budget. Despite their hypocritical whining about the "Bush deficit", and their supposed "concern" about it, the second that we start to actually cut back anywhere they will run back to their old scare-mongering tactics, calling us "heartless Republicans" who "hate the poor" and want to "starve children and the elderly".

You know the routine. They've been doing it for forty years or more. It's only in the past 5 years that they've suddenly developed a conscience about about spending huge amounts of your money. Only lately have they become "concerned" about leaving huge debts to our children.

It is, of course, all garbage. The Democrats are just as happy to waste your money as they have always been. Unfortunately, many Republicans would now seem to be on the same page.

The RINO's are just as happy as the Democrats to spend money, as they always have been. That's not surprising.

What is surprising is the seeming lack of concern among most of the more Conservative Republicans, including President Bush.

For once, the Democrats can legitimately call us hypocrites (as opposed to the other 99% of the time when they just do it reflexively). Republicans have been screaming about the Democrats' spending habits and expansion of government forever. We've now controlled the Congress for over ten years, and the White House for six. What have we cut back on? Nothing. In fact, were expanding the government almost as fast as the Democrats ever did.

The war is a large part of our budget problem, and I have no problem with that. The war is necessary for our nation's safety, which is explicitly spelled out in the US Constitution. It's other huge expenditures that I have a problem with.

Republicans have been saying for years that throwing money at the public schools won't solve the educational problems of this country. So what did we do when we gained power? President Bush let Teddy Kennedy write a new education bill when he took office! Teddy Kennedy! That's like letting Rosie O'Donnell write a diet book!

We are now throwing more money than ever at education, with the expected lack of results. What thanks did President Bush get for this? He got to listen to the steady drumbeat of, "Bush is underfunding education!" since he did it. What else did he expect?

So now the education bureaucracy has hired more "administrators" with that money to swell their union rolls, which certainly didn't help us any. They didn't go out and hire teachers, because that may have actually helped the problems with the public schools, and that's not the aim of the Democrats.

Then we have the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 22 smaller bureaucracies were herded into one massive bureaucracy, which was supposed to make it "more efficient". Does anyone actually believe that one huge government bureaucracy is any more efficient than many small ones? If you do, I'd like to speak with you about some investment opportunities.

And, of course, the Democrats wouldn't let the DHS bill pass without making sure that all of its employees would be unionized. Government union workers always vote Democrat. Do you see a pattern here?

The DHS was supposed to be created to make America safer. The Democrats wouldn't allow it to be created unless they could gain votes from the deal. But they will whine loud and long if you accuse them of putting their party before the good of the country.

(If there are any Democrats out there who still want to argue that point, let me know. Maybe I'll meet you somewhere so that I can laugh in your face.)

We also have the prescription drug plan, which is a classic example of getting nothing for something. Lots of something. Hundreds of billions of somethings!

Promising Federally subsidized prescription drugs during the campaign was absolute stupidity. It gained us nothing. How many of those "cat-food munching" seniors do you think switched their vote because President Bush promised them cheap prescription drugs? I'd bet that you could count the number on the legs of a walker.

Yes, we could do it because we're "compassionate", but it's not going to help the problem. Prescription drugs will now only get more expensive. When the government subsidizes anything, it always gets more expensive. Which means that you and I are going to pay more and more for this "entitlement".

And this is not an entitlement! It's a gift! A gift from people like you and me, who are giving these people our tax money so that they can live more comfortably. And what thanks have we gotten?

"It's too complicated!", "It's not enough!"

I'm still waiting for one AARP member to say, "Thank you for this gift". The same goes for welfare, Medicare, Medicaid and God knows how many other government programs that we give our money to. We get no thanks, just whining that its not enough, because most Americans don't understand that they don't get money from "the government", but from you and me.

And if you want to speak of "compassion", when are we who have the tax money forcibly taken from us so that we can give these ungrateful cretins these "gifts" going to get some compassion? Every time that they take my tax money, they are, quite literally, taking it away from my daughter. "Taking candy from a baby" is usually considered a bad thing, but if you filter it through the US Congress, I guess it's OK.

That the RINO's are doing this wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary. That the mainstream, and even the "extreme" conservatives are going along with this is sickening. Some are speaking out against it, but not nearly enough.

To paraphrase my friends over at the Anti-Strib, we are "Conservatives first, Republicans second" (feel free to correct me), and I agree. But, unfortunately, if you're a Conservative, the Republican Party is the only real game in town, and we need to make them understand that we don't want the government expanding anymore. We don't even want the government to stay the same size. We want it cut back. Back to where it is, as it should be, within the confines of the Constitution.

We've got a long, hard fight to get back to that point, and it may now be impossile, but the way it stands now, we're not even trying to fight.

The links are on my sidebar. Start writing to your government!