Frisco Nan & Steny On Spending Cuts

Frisco Nan's press conference earlier this week displaying her attitude toward any budget cuts was instructive.

Looking shocked and incredulous, she blurted that Paul Ryan's recommended 2011 cuts would affect some tens of millions of dollars for meals delivered to old people. Nan was outraged, claiming this just couldn't be allowed to occur.

It's truly laughable. You'd think that there is really no spending cut Nan could accept. And I think that's actually true.

Then Steny Hoyer was on CNBC yesterday morning spouting his canned lines whenever a budget cut is under debate.

Sputtering unconvincingly, the silver-haired hack began to rant about how Republican tax cuts of trillions of dollars for the wealthy, combined with spending cuts, would drive the economy into another 'worst since Hoover' recession. This was vented with a straight face, as if Hoyer genuinely has forgotten the 25% spending increase in 2009 that the Democratic Congress built in over 2008. Or the largest peacetime surge in spending under Wonderboy during the recent Congressional session.

What's lamentable is that neither Frisco Nan nor her former aide, Hoyer, is capable of saying something along  these lines,

'We agree that, given the current debt and deficit levels, and the strengthening economy, spending can be carefully reduced. Nobody could seriously believe that spending can only be increased, never cut. But we have to carefully assess how to cut so as to cause the least pain and suffering among our poorest citizens.'

I know, it's still pretty nauseating. But this sort of statement would probably seem reasonable to gullible mainstream liberals, and maybe even fool some independents.

But, thankfully, it's just not in Frisco Nan, Steny or Harry Reid to be reasonable. They really believe that spending just has to go up- all the time. Regardless of contexts.

Perhaps the best line was one I heard yesterday attributed to Reid. He apparently complained that he wasn't about to just let the Tea Party determine the federal budget.

Well, look at it this way. If you think the Tea Party had a major influence on last Novemember's elections, then Harry's really out of touch, isn't he? Because if the Tea Party sentiment is as broad as it seems to be, and Reid ignores it, the Democrats will probably lose a few more House seats, and maybe the Senate, in 2012, regardless of what happens to Wonderboy.

Jeb Hensarling & Steny Hoyer On CNBC This Morning

If you wanted to see a really clear example of the difference in philosophies of the liberal Democrats in Congress versus the more conservative wing of the Republican party, this morning's long, argumentative exchange between former House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and GOP Texas Congressman Jeb Hensarling. Hensarling was on the Bowles-Simpson Commission, and is vice-chair of the committee on financial services in the House.

Hensarling was excoriating the Democrats' lack of even passing a budget for this fiscal year, and Wonderboy's 2012 budget proposal. In response, Hoyer immediately launched into a predictable, hacked-up whine, complaining that our deficits were all the fault of Republican presidents and, gosh, you know, the Democrats just want to 'invest' in important things. It's not really 'spending' if you swear it's 'investment.'

Joe Kernan, the CNBC co-anchor moderating the melee, asked Hoyer why we couldn't leave it to private sector sources to invest in infrastructure? Hoyer, of course, had no response.

Then Kernan mentioned how the deficit and over-spending has been the rule for over 30 years, back when Hoyer was already in Congress. Steny couldn't resist another whine, claiming that when Clinton was in office, so many million jobs were created, but George Bush destroyed them, and and more, making Democrats better on budgets and economics.

Nowhere did Hoyer admit to the contexts of Clinton having the vaunted 'peace dividend' from the fall of the Soviet Union, while George W Bush fought two wars. Hoyer also accused Republicans of permissive financial sector regulation, carefully omitting Barney Frank's role in swelling the GSEs over time.

My point is, Hoyer reflexively just went into a whine, tossing out all sorts of accusations spread over past decades, as if to excuse high level of spending now. He simply couldn't admit that the past two years have seen more new debt accumulated, to no good purpose, than the all the prior years of the Republic.

Even in the midst of an obvious fiscal problem, and widespread public acknowledgement thereof, Hoyer and his ilk simply cannot stop themselves. They still think a budget that adds another $1.3T of debt this year is okay.

I wish more people could have seen Hoyer's disgraceful grandstanding.

Steny Hoyer Soaks The Rich

CNBC employs a nearly-communist political reporter named John Hargrove. Hargrove also writes for the NY Times, which pretty much tells you all you need to know.

When Hargrove interviews Democrats, he generally just nods and withholds followup questions, as if he's receiving Truth from the Mount.

Yesterday, I saw a clip of some of Steny Hoyer's remarks in an interview with Hargrove. Hoyer is the House Democratic Majority Leader.

Asked by Hargrove if Democrats were out to "soak the rich," Hoyer denied it.

Then promptly set about confirming it.

He solemnly intoned that all Democrats want is for the "rich to pay their fair share."

Code words for "soaking the rich."

And, it's the Progressive in our progressive income tax rates. Rather than everyone pay an equal share of her/his earnings, the Democrats feel that those who make more are not entitled to what they earned.

Because they earned more, may amass more wealth from their own efforts, that wealth actually belongs to the government and the rest of society.

Let's face it. Once you depart from a flat tax, government is engaged in theft of property and an open-ended grab on anyone's wealth anytime they feel they need it. If one progressive rate is valid, why not double it? Or triple it?

Once government, or Steny, decides that one higher rate is a "fair share," who is to say another liberal won't feel that said rate is unfairly low?

This is just classic Democratic populism. They deny engaging in class warfare, then immediately turn around and declare it.

Hoyer ended, of course, by claiming that all the Democrats were really doing is reversing unfair "tax cuts for the rich" from the Bush years.

From Steny's words, you can tell he has zero grasp of macroeconomics. Or any economics, for that matter.

Steny, when was the last time the US economy prospered under marginal income tax rates which had been increased on those earning more money?

Never.