Tom Delay Says That There Is No More Waste, Fraud, or Abuse in the Federal Budget!

Tom Delay announces that there is no more waste, fraud, or abuse in the federal budget:

TAPPED: September 2005 Archives: STRANGE VICTORY. Via the Bull Moose, some awesomely weird remarks from Tom DeLay:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an "ongoing victory," and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.

Mr. DeLay was defending Republicans' choice to borrow money and add to this year's expected $331 billion deficit to pay for Hurricane Katrina relief. Some Republicans have said Congress should make cuts in other areas, but Mr. DeLay said that doesn't seem possible.

"My answer to those that want to offset the spending is sure, bring me the offsets, I'll be glad to do it. But nobody has been able to come up with any yet," the Texas Republican told reporters at his weekly briefing.

Every single person who has ever claimed to be a small government Republican needs to immediately:

1. Dress only in sackcloth and ashes.
2. Apologize to the nation for the damage they have done.
3. Swear on the most sacred altars that they will never vote for or work for a Republican candidate again until they have managed to retake control of the Republican Party from the likes of Tom Delay, George W. Bush, and Bill Frist.

Only thus can they hope to retain their self-respect.

Comments

[opihi]

You obviously don't understand the Plan. Cut taxes, spend more, borrow from the Chinese, start a war with the Chinese, cancel the debt. If Americans survive the war, the debt is gone, if they don't...Rapture baby!

[christo]

Yeah, but, I made a point of asking one of my self-labeled conservative pals last week what his trouble with Hilary is and made a point of distributing it to as many people as possible, broaden the debate. The King of the local Taipei S-L-Cs wrote in pointing out the staffing the travel office with cronies snafu (all of $21-23 mil in budgeting) and:

The democratic party has always stood for bigger
government with higher taxes to pay for it while the
republican party stands for smaller government and a
smaller tax burden on the working man.

I mean this guy was vocal about his support for the right to the point of crying when W's drunk driving record came up, "it's all political coming out now". I tried pointing out to him that his kids and mine will be paying for the Bush deficits for a long time completely in the face of his statement. I haven't heard back yet. What the heck is the basis for supporting W from these guys? Forget about a tea party discussion on social safety nets as long as people are like this.

[EvanstonDem]

The $162,100 of the Federal Budget that pays Tom Delay's salary is an obvious example waste, fraud, and abuse of the federal budget.

[Movie Guy]

Come on, Brad. You gotta love these clowns. Leno couldn't ask for better material.

I'm not sure that there are any Congressional Republicans left who can look at themselves in the mirror without blowing glass all over the floor.

Just send me a debit card and stay off my property.

[Michael Robinson]

Don't you get it? "Small government" has always[*] been code for "don't take money from the pockets of hardworking white folk and hand it to dusky-skinned social parasites".

There will never be a "tea party discussion on social safety nets", and there won't be any sort of actual "discussion" until the Democrats realize that, for a big chunk of the American population, they're the party of n***er-lovers.

Whenever you see or hear a member of the right wing use "Liberal" as an epithet, substitute, "n***er-lover".

[*] Well, since the inception of the Southern Strategy, anyway.

[ogmb]

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

[cm]

From my context-specific dictionary:

Waste: spending money to reinforce/raise levees

Fraud: depriving constituents (large businesses) of pork by infrastructure spending (cf. "Waste")

Abuse: (of funds) evacuating and safeguarding/restoring property of non-constituent victims

[cm]

Michael Robinson: The "race issue(s)" is in good part a cheap rationalization of a cultural divide between corporate interests & 24/7 work-focused "always on the job" culture versus (particular denominations of) "live & work to facilitate enjoyment" cultures.

Compare "mainstream" reactions to African-Americans, hippies, and perhaps less so gays or environmentalists (and, importantly, vice versa!). And towards other "social deviants". They are not that different!

In the race/ethnicity case, I suspect there is in a way a north/south (current or historical by ancestry) divide by ease of agriculture/elementary provision of food. Northerners had to work much harder to produce food due to less favorable sunshine/climate.

[Kimmitt]

What the heck is the basis for supporting W from these guys?

They really, really, really, really, really, really hate an awful lot of Americans.

[wetzel]

Data has been coming in seeming to point to a slowing economy. If we are entering a recession will it be mild or severe? I don't see where the fiscal or monetary leverage is going to be there to get us out of it.

Six months ago, we were having regular discussions about Setser and Roubini's preconditions to avoid a meltdown brought on by the twin deficits (budget and trade) spiralling the debt-to-GDP ratio out of control. This discussion of our out-of-control budget deficit and the policy bankruptcy at the top levels of our government seems as good a place as any to ask the experts. With 200 billion dollars of new Katrina spending to add to future budget deficits and record high energy prices exacerbating the trade deficit, it looks like like the preconditions for a 'soft landing' set out by Setser and Roubini are not going to materialize. Is this correct?

[save_the_rustbelt]

If only we could ship Bob Taft to Washington, all the goofballs would be in one place.

[Douglas]

Michael Robinson you are correct. So much of the political divide is driven by class and race. How many people are republican because being hard working and not dependent on the government makes them "better" than other people? Put a middle or working class white person into the same group as minorities and the poor and they are horrified. Regardless of what the party really stands for, most republicans I know could never be associated with the party of the poor or minorities.

[Ken Overton]

Foxes report -- henhouse is strong and secure!

[JR]

I've always accepted the proposition that a manageable deficit is worth the pain, as long as the result is good governance.

[Ummm... Big deficits aren't good governance. Why should you imagine that people who create such will create "good governance" elsewhere?]

I also sympathize with traditional conservative and libertarian ideals. There are clear trade-offs involved.

Unfortunately, this wacky administration has left us with the worst of both worlds. Rising discretionary and defense spending coupled with tax cuts are putting our fiscal future in deep kimchee. But the beneficiaries of big government seem to be ideologues and loyalists. In other words, we're paying for big government without any ROI.

My conservative pals have had enough. But I worry that the rest of the Republican party has not.

[sglover]

"I'm not sure that there are any Congressional Republicans left who can look at themselves in the mirror without blowing glass all over the floor."

Note that yesterday, Senate Republicans closed ranks and rejected Hillary Clinton's proposal for a bipartisan investigation of the New Orleans debacle. It was a straight party line vote. None of the supposed Republican "moderates" and "mavericks" -- not one -- was willing to support the notion that maybe both sides of the aisle might have something to say about a basic function of government.

So the next time you hear hosannas sung about "straight-talking" McCain or "thoughtful" Hagel, remember -- they're all whores and shills.

[PaulC]

And if you believe that I've got a bridge to sell you... a $223 million bridge to Gravina Island, Alaska.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/08/09/bridges/index_np.html

[João Carlos]

I fear that all economic disasters that are coming will not make the republicans be serious about the federal budget defict. They are going repeal the estate tax anyway after the Katrina's disaster. The democrats simply not have spines and brains and the main media is blind and deaf and cannot talk against the Dear Leader King George II. So, no disaster will make the republicans be adults.

Welcome to the worse of the worlds: recession (and maybe depression) with huge federal defict (growing!).

João Carlos

sorry my bad english, my native language is portuguese.

[John Emerson]

I think that the one unifying factor on the right any more is hatred of liberalism. (This lies deeper than hatred of terrorists, for example). Racism and anti-labor class feeling are parts of this, but anti-liberalism includes them. If you hate liberals for any reason, you're a conservative. You don't need to share all the reasons.

Brad posted a "Morning in America" piece a few days ago, but the destructive things being done are significant enough that we might really be watching the last days of a great nation. Once America's prosperity and international influence have diminished, taking revenge on liberals will be the only thing those guys have left to do.

[Julian Elson]

Many people think that waste, fraud, and abuse literally means things like "millionaires buying their food with bogus food stamps," "millions of government bureaucrats shuffling papers around to each other," etc. These things are, of course, miniscule fractions of the federal budget. Even the things that seem to be clearly directed at narrow interests, like agricultural subsidies, aren't much. Nonetheless, people want to believe that there's a huge amount of outright wasted money in the government, for much the same reason that many want to believe that the nephew of an Nigerian ex-dictator has a deal that will gaurantee them $5 million if they'll just send in $5,000 to secure its release: people want free lunches.

Perhaps Delay believed the Reagan mythology about money simply being wasted on hordes of paper-shuffling bureaucrats, and observing that he can't cut the budget through such easy means, concludes that Republican leaders since Gingrich have been a smashing success in curbing WF&A.

Or, perhaps, more likely, he was making self-serving excuses for not being able to pay for huge spending increases.

[ChristianPinko]

Ding ding ding! We have a winner --- no, two winners! Douglas and Michael Robinson, you have nailed it!

Call them n---rs, call them the Underclass, call them the Dangerous Classes --- call them what you like, they remain for the middle-class majority the great seething Them, the boogeyman dwelling in Hellish slums and forsaken shacks, lurking always on the margins, always threatening to overwhelm America in a dark wave of racial inferiority / cultural degradation / Communism / sexual perversion. And the elites have always been able to use fear of Them as a way to win the loyalty of Americans, no matter how feckless and corrupt those elites might be. Can America ever see the truth, and realize that the danger comes from the top of society, not the bottom?

[Samuel Knight]

Unfortunately, the one way that the political process will NOT be changed is rational argument.

The GOP has united people who have absolute faith in GOD (in their own image of course), with absolute faith in free markets (again with the proviso to bail out your big donors.)

Add to this the virulent hatred of "liberals" foreigners, and whatever "other" is out there,it makes an easy parry of any rational argument.

And lastly, money, gobs of it, going to lots of right wing media organizations (Weekly Standard, American Specator, NY Post, etc) and right wing "think tanks" *(Heritage, AEI, Cato, etc.)

Put all of this together and you're not going to get through with no logical argument.

[bakho]

Goodgod. Bernanke drank the Koolaid.

"In the shorter term, the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina will have a palpable effect on the national economy," White House economic adviser Ben Bernanke said in prepared remarks for delivery at the National Press Club. But he said private-sector forecasts were for healthy long-run growth.

Bernanke said the White House intends to continue pursuing policies that have make the economy able to withstand shocks and that will keep growth on track.

"These policies include making tax relief permanent, reducing the budget deficit by limiting spending, strengthening retirement and health security through efforts like Social Security reform ... and enhancing energy security," Bernanke said.

[Ken Houghton]

Dear Brad,

There are several of us who still identify ourselves as "small government Republicans."

Many of us have not been able to vote for a Republican presidential candidate since 1976 (the 1980 platform having intruded into the bedroom, where true Republicans do not legislate). And even those who could rationalise that only got through the late 1980s and early 1990s (I presume) because of the relative fiscal responsibility of the 1983-1986 tax increases.

By the time of "no nude Texans," the trend was clear, but there was hope. That the "Contract" was more a social than an economic document should have given pause, especially combined with the failure to address health care in any way except to make Bill Frist richer.

1996 gave us "welfare reform," for which your liberal friends never "forgave" Al Gore, thereby p*ss*ng away 2000 to the point that it was stealable.

Post-2000 has been an abject disaster, to be certain, but the "small government Republican" faction remains true to the ideal of the Republican Party, even as we have to vote for Democrats.

We don't need sackcloth and ashes; we need a party that is responsible. The Democrats could be it, but they're purists when they think they're in power and ch*ck*nsh*t when they know they aren't.

[a different chris]

>"millions of government bureaucrats shuffling papers around to each other,"

Ironically, a lot, maybe most, of that paper shuffling comes from well-meaning but misconceived ideas about how to prevent Waste, Fraud and Abuse. You can charge the government a couple million to fill out paperwork that ensures that you won't steal- in the classic sense-a couple of hundred K from them.

By "classic sense" I'm trying to draw a distinction between what a true white-collar crook does and, say, what Halliburton does.

[pgl]

At Angrybear - we prefer to see this as an admission from DeLay that the GOP never cut taxes - only deferred them.

[nmg]

Wait, let me get this straight. There are some of you who rely on the explanation that republicans are hateful racists to explain the fiscal irresponsibility of Tom Delay? Seriously, you can do better than that. Even those of you who are hateful racists.

nmg

[The Fool]

The direct implication of Delay's claim is that we have to raise taxes -- and certainly can't cut them anymore. You would have to have an industrial strength supply-side fantasy theory to even attempt to justify any further tax cuts.

[Tom]

I am reminded of one of my favorite lines about Reagan, said when he was still running for President the first time, "He seems to believe that there's a line in the Federal budget for 'Waste, Fraud & Abuse'."

[Ralph]

Tucker Carlson who has a new show on MSNBC said the other night that it is a myth that Republicans (esp George W Bush) are opposed to Federal spending and small government. Carlson, a self-styled talk show conservative, has been opposed to the Iraq occupation since he broke with George W Bush in 2004 as the situation deteriorated.

[Ralph]

Tucker Carlson who has a new show on MSNBC said the other night that it is a myth that Republicans (esp George W Bush) are opposed to Federal spending and are pro-small government. Carlson, a self-styled talk show conservative, has been opposed to the Iraq occupation since he broke with George W Bush in 2004 as the situation deteriorated.

[weco]

Put it this way, the Democrats are better off not winning the next election -- I don't know how you can fix a CA and government deficit this size without serious pain.