Pips are squeaking
Former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, in addition to being possessed in later life of perhaps the most fearsome eyebrows in British politics, once claimed that he would “squeeze property speculators until the pips squeak”*.
Well, thanks to Obama’s plans to freeze overall discretionary spending, Congressional pips are squeaking. One would expect, of course, objections from the “borrow, tax and spend” blancmangey bulk of spendthrift whores that makes up most of Congress — if they can’t spend our money in their eternal quest to get re-elected so they can spend more of our money, what would they have to do with their time — but some of the alleged fiscal hawks are squeaking, too.
Now, we can leave aside the debate over whether freezing spending while the economy is vulnerable is a good idea — I’m personally not convinced that it is — and also ignore the fact that it’s not discretionary spending that is the problem and just enjoy some of the piffle reported on in that article. To pick one from each side (and clearly politico’s writer is finding this all rather amusing):
Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a conservative Democrat who often takes on Big Government, is criticizing the Obama administration for proposing to end tax breaks for big oil and gas companies in her home state — even though the White House estimates it could save $36.5 billion over 10 years by doing so.
“I’m against that completely,” Landrieu said Tuesday.
O rly?
(Kit) Bond — a Republican who has been merciless in his criticism of deficits under Obama — says the administration should spare the C-17 and instead target the F-35, a “total waste” of a Stealth fighter that just happens to be built outside his home state.
As I say, we can to some extent leave aside the question of whether overall spending should be frozen and let us instead just consider the specificity of the whines. There’s no way we can expect any remotely objective evaluation of the relative worth of one aircraft over another, or one industrial tax break over another, from the elected representatives from districts into which the money would flow if one decision were made and not if another decision were made.
Obviously, when governments are elected and governments spend our money, there’s bound to be preference and subjectivity in the decision-making process, but this stuff is so parochial that even if it weren’t being used to purchase re-election on our dime, it would be suspect. Witness the EADS refuelling plane contract farrago (which is, uneblievably, still ongoing, whilst accusations of somewhat extraordinary favouritism are made); regardless of the essential damage to the democratic process that results from using the collected taxes of the nation (and the deferred taxes that constitute the borrowing) to purchase votes, the process doesn’t even produce good results. The Air Force still doesn’t have a tanker or a godamned contract to get one, over a decade after this nonsense started.
There’s only a blurry line between perfidious thieving hackery and representing one’s constituency but in many of these cases, the line’s not blurry enough to excuse what actually happens.
*Interestingly, that article details the wild flailings of a later Labour government into “bleed the rich” comparable to that of the government for which Healy worked. One can only hope that the current crop suffer the same, prolonged, electoral disaster that affected Healy’s lot.