The EVIL Sen. Jim Bunning

Well, here is what happens when you are so involved in playing the lame duck that you don't read legislation.  Bunning decided to try to make a point at exactly the wrong time.  Congress adopted pay-go legislation less than a month ago, violated it for the first time the very next week, and he was just trying to make a point about this second violation in only the first month since it was signed into law.  Laws certainly do affect people like me and you differently than they do those in Congress.

When you have a $3.5 Trillion budget and you suddenly decide that you would like to extend unemployment benefits, highway project funding, and various other miscelaneous items (I am not gonna ready the whole bill), you simply gotta cut the money from some other programs.  However, in typical Capitol Hill fashion, although there were plenty of people lining up to take credit for handing out more money (that simply does not exist); there was no one looking for the cuts to offset the new spending.  Bunning's point was not to have 2,000 highway workers furloughed for two days (for the record, these are not the actual workers that you see on the highways.  These guys were the government oversight of those workers. (feeling a little less bad about it now aren't you?)) which they were, nor was it to have unemployment benefits cutoff (although for the record I am starting to wonder if they ever do actually end, they are now up to 2 years).  His point was that it is utterly useless to make a rule and then turn right around and break it.

I gotta say that I think he is right.  Now now, calm down.  I am not saying that he should have caused all this ruckus.  What I am saying is that Capitol Hill needs to get their priorities straight.  I am sure what actually happened is that the party in power did not know that this funding deadline was looming after all, they have their hands full trying to get a Health Care bill passed that a majority of Americans (even those living in the bluest of states) do not want.  This loss of focus on impending deadline caused this particular one to sneak up on them.  However, once they realized that they had basically warped weeks into the future they cobbled this $10 Billion bill together just in time.  Forget the motions and procedures that are the norm, forget the partisan politics being bandied about by both sides; this is a REAL EMERGENCY!!  We gotta get it done NOW!  Wait haven't I heard all this BS before?

Bunning's theatrics forced an actual vote on this bill.  The real trick here is that they tried to pass it by universal consent so that nobody would have to take responsibility for their individual vote.  Bunning forced the vote and now the hypocrites are out in the open.  Completely exposed by the very tricks they were trying to use to cover their tracks.