Twitterers mark 1,000,000 votes to cut spending as Congress spends

By Kay B. Day

[Photo of US Capitol by Kay B. Day]By Friday, multiple messages were sent via Twitter in celebration of a milestone for You Cut, a project of the House Republican Economic Recovery Working group. The milestone being tweeted: 1,000,000 votes had been cast to do something about the mindless spending Washington is addicted to.

The cyber-celebration came at an appropriate time because President Barack Obama was at the G20 in Canada and pushing the Democrat agenda—spend more.

The big spend approach is antiquated dating to the policy of another big spender, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Obama justifies the spending that would likely earn his party a place in the Guinness World Records book by blaming Republicans. That is misleading, because much of the overspending stems from entitlements in place before President George W. Bush took office. Two of the highest profiles in spending, bordering near-criminality, are government sponsored enterprises Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Both programs are leftwing pets and both programs have lost money and have been embroiled in scandals.

On June 24, Americans for Tax Reform’s Center for Fiscal Accountability took Obama to task for his Homebuyer Credit Program. Julie Borowski, writing for the CFA blog, said, “[n]early $30 million tax dollars were doled out in fraudulent claims. Most of this money went to people who were, get this, incarcerated.” The reaction prompted predictable proclamations by fiscal conservatives that crime does pay.

No one in Washington has advanced the idea of attrition for job vacancies at non-vital agencies, a practical method for reducing the federal employee roster that will eventually consume more and more of the nation’s future budgets.

The current round of You Cut options was selected because hundreds of people emailed to request choices from the past be brought back for another chance. Voters select what they perceive as the best projects to cut. Among the current round are consolidating and reducing funding for federal advisory committees, with a potential savings of $340 million over the next 10 years, and removing support for union activities that could be perceived as being subsidized by the federal government for a potential savings of $1.2 billion over the next 10 years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says government workers make up more than 50 percent of all union workers (state, local, federal), with roughly one-third of those in federal jobs.

Federal government performance increasingly demonstrates the impossibility of overseeing a monopolistic central government that continues to grow rather than downsize as most private businesses and the states have done in hard economic times.

A classic example was noted by media recently when 2 Census Bureau managers were fired for faking at least 10,000 questionnaires in Brooklyn. Fiscal conservatives doubt this is the only Census lapse.

The Obamacare bill Congress pushed through on a partisan steamroller will add thousands of federal jobs to IRS for what most call, appropriately, the “health cops.” Those will be necessary to assess individuals’ policies for fines and to ‘fine’ people who don’t buy health insurance. Both are unconstitutional.

Obama has suggested Americans will face “difficult choices” next year because of the budget deficits his Party has contributed significantly to. Yet Democrats in charge of Washington appear to be incapable of viewing the spending problem from within. Instead they repeatedly turn to taxes.

Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that in the US, Democrats tax everything that moves. Clinton appears to have a proclivity for telling foreigners tidbits from behind the administration scenes. She made the ‘tax everything that moves’ comment in Pakistan. Later she announced in Ecuador that Obama planned to sue Arizona over the state’s immigration law long before anyone told the governor of Arizona.

That more than 1,000,000 votes have been cast by Americans who want to cut federal spending suggests it’s time to do so. Regardless of the Party affiliation of the member of Congress, spending should be nixed and if it isn’t, the congressman should be nixed at the ballot box. Fiscal conservatives have called for reductions in spending even during the Bush administration.

Obama decries America’s appetite for oil when he should be criticizing his own Party’s gluttony when it comes to American taxpayer dollars.

More than 1,000,000 votes cast to cut spending should be taken seriously by those in power before anyone entertains the idea of another tax increase.

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by Grover Norquist at Daily Caller (June 28, 2010)

Update on Monday, June 28, 2010 at 1:11PM by Kay B. Day, Editor

June 28, 2010

Democrats have refused to pass a budget; therefore they are spending money with no idea where what they're spending will come from. Republicans in Congress point out the hypocrisy and other facts associated with current levels of spending.

One example:

 "Democrats have long touted the importance of budgeting.  In 2006, Majority Leader Hoyer lamented that Congress was, 'on the cusp of failing to meet the most basic responsibility of governing—enacting a budget.'  More recently, the Majority Leader has attempted to position himself as a fiscal hawk, saying in April, 'The course we are on leads to debt that exceeds the value of our entire economy.  To a government that does nothing but pay for entitlements and pay interest to our creditors.  And an end to American leadership in the world.'  Sadly, it seems that partisan election-year politics are more important to Democrats than 'the most basic responsibility of governing' or America’s leadership in the world."