Thursday, December 02, 2010
By Ben Shapiro On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate rejected a ban on earmarks, the addenda to bills that allow congressmen and senators to steer federal cash toward pet projects in their states and districts. The vote wasn’t even close. The ban was defeated 56-39.
“We have put in place the most dramatic reform of this appropriations process since I’ve served in Congress,” whined Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Majority Whip and Appropriations Committee member. “There is full disclosure in my office of every single request for an appropriation.”
Sorry to burst your bubble, Dick, but we’re not merely interested in finding out who is stealing from the public till—we’re interested in stopping them from stealing. Transparency doesn’t equate to responsibility. The O.J. Simpson trial was transparent. It was still a miscarriage of justice and a debacle of the highest order.
We want a fiscally responsible government. That, in fact, was the point of the last election: we’re mad as hell that our elected officials treat our tax dollars like toilet paper. They ask us if they can “borrow” our money/toilet paper; we know they’re full of crap, and that once they’ve used it, they have no intention of returning it. When they run out of money/toilet paper, they simply print new rolls of it, making money and toilet paper roughly equivalent. By the time our government is done, we might as well substitute one for the other.
We know that it isn’t tough to cut spending. This week alone, for example, the federally-funded Smithsonian Institution spent cash stocking its National Portrait Gallery with pictures of Ellen DeGeneres clutching her naked bosom, penises, and nude brothers making out—all of this in order to show America how gays and lesbians “struggle for justice … [attempting to] claim their full inheritance in America’s promise of equality, inclusion and social dignity.”
Note to the federal government: the unemployment rate is 9.6 percent. Perhaps that money might be better spent actually helping those who “struggle for justice” by giving it back to the people who create jobs for those in need.
Also this week, the Senate approved $1.25 billion in funding for black farmers who were supposedly discriminated against by the Department of Agriculture. Only one problem: The vast majority of claimants to that cash are fraudulent. There are 18,000 black farmers in the United States. Over 94,000 supposed black farmers have filed claims against the Department of Agriculture. Those farmers who were discriminated against were already recipients of a $1 billion settlement distributed in years past. Why the sudden need to spend an additional $1.25 billion for non-farming farmers? Just another racial payoff by liberals to a key constituency.
We’re sick of it. In fact, we’re so sick of it that Americans want to cut spending rather than raising taxes by a 2 to 1 margin, according to a recent AP-CNBC poll. Fifty-six percent of Americans think that our current level of debt is unsustainable. And nearly 80 percent of Americans want to cut government services to bring that debt under control.
This puts the Democratic Party and its squishy Republican allies in mortal danger. For decades, they’ve gotten elected based on simple bribery: they pay off supporters, while their supporters return the favor with their votes and campaign bucks. That system, however, is breaking down. While our European counterparts hold mass marches to protest cuts to social services, Americans protest costly, unsustainable and counterproductive increases in them like Obamacare. While our European friends grouse that they’ll have to retire a few years later and work a few hours more, we complain that too much of our money is being taken away from us in the first place.
President Obama doesn’t get it. That’s because he doesn’t understand the American people as a whole. Yes, during good times, we like our social services—we make foolish decisions and elect liberals who promise to use our wealth in “fair” fashion. Then, when liberals inevitably screw things up, we wise up to our mistakes and recognize that wealth creation requires the dynamism of freedom rather than the stability of redistributionism.
Americans know that the debt crisis won’t be solved overnight. We know that it will take sustained cuts, and that those cuts will hurt at the beginning. We’re fat and bloated, and it will take a regimen of diet and exercise to get us back into fighting shape. But we’re done being fattened for the slaughter by politicians who care only about their personal power.
Cue “Eye of the Tiger.” America is ready to fight once again. And if our politicians stand in our way, we’ll give them the same treatment their unemployed colleagues received on Nov. 2.