Feb 28 2013
Congress Needs To Outlaw Budget-Cutting Melodrama By Bureaucrats
This week’s stupid melodrama play from the administration – all the way to their premature (and unnecessary) freeing of 100’s of illegal aliens – gives Congress an opportunity to do something important. I mean something that will make a big difference.
What is not new, however, is the impulse of officials to resort to melodrama when they are faced with budget cuts. Getting people’s attention has been a challenge in the case of the sequester. In the latest Washington Post-Pew Research Center survey, only one in four said they were closely following news about the automatic spending cuts.
The ploy even has a name: the “Washington Monument” syndrome, a reference to the National Park Service’s decision to close that landmark and the Grand Canyon for two days a week after the Nixon administration cut funding in 1969.
What happened in 1969 – and this week at ICE – is a clear dereliction of duty and an abuse of power. No person should be able to hold America hostage like this. Not even (and maybe especially) the POTUS. There are CLEARLY billions of dollars of waste, fraud and abuse to trim before any government official needs to pull needed services. As a previous post of mine noted, you cannot blow $100,000 of dollars on dog training lessons or billions of dollars on Green boondoggles and then claim there is no money to protect the nation, its resources and its people.
So here is the answer and what the GOP needs to push through Congress this week (and I dare the Dems to fight it).
Make it illegal to pull services, support, etc from mission critical activities as long as there are non-mission critical funds available. This would make it impossible to hold us hostage or threaten us before, say, salaries are cut, or regulations are cut, or new programs on the drawing board are cut, etc.
Make it a felony for anyone to play games like this – and we will see an end to this kind of dumb melodrama! Let’s make political melodrama ILLEGAL!
This may be the one occasion of Obama’s tenure where the monumental inattention and apathy of the American people has actually hindered rather than assisted him in his plans.
Highlander,
We can only hope. I do find it hilarious the ‘cry wold’ apathy does seem to be setting in.
I agree with Highlander.
Mr. President, you know what they say about payback? I went outside this morning and guess what? It is a nice day!!
White House spokesman Carney claimed that they had no knowledge of any releases.
Secretary Janet Napolitano claims to have had no knowledge of the releases.
The ploy even has a name: the “idiot defense, “dumb CEO defense,” “dummy defense,” “ostrich defense,” and “Sergeant Schultz defense.”
The Dem’s have gone a bridge too far. The American people have become so desensitized to the fear mongering of the President and his Party, that they have simply stop paying attention. And when the entire crew claims total ignorance of the original threats that were rebroadcasted by a complicit media so that almost no media outlet had not repeated the same fears, uncertainties and doubts, you know the strategy has utterly failed. No person that has even a slightly passing knowledge of the largesse of the Federal beast is even slightly moved by the political theater that they witnessed for the last few weeks. I also think that the Sandy Hook shooting and the last few months of knee jerk “never let a crisis go to waste” has reminded Americans of just how extreme and over reactionary this Administration is. America is fed up with it and any further cries of “wolf, wolf!” will be met with indignant outrage. There will be no more support forthcoming, even from those that supported (and probably still support) alot of the progressive agenda. Crying wolf eventually undermines the support of your even your most ardent supporters. I just wish the media had been doing its job before the election.
[…] As I noted in a previous post, this clear risk to human safety posing as political drama is grounds for criminal charges of negligence and dereliction of duty. So here is the answer and what the GOP needs to push through Congress this week (and I dare the Dems to fight it). […]