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Friday, September 15, 2006
Tony Perkins: Packing in the wrong
There's so much wrong with Tony Perkins's analysis of recent legislation that it's hard to know where to start:
Thanks to the hard work of Senator Tom Coburn and House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, and that of a bipartisan legion of concerned citizens, we can all be reformers when it comes to runaway government spending. Last night the House of Representatives passed and sent to the White House legislation that by January 1, 2008 creates a Google-like search engine to help citizens track some $1 trillion in federal grants, contracts, special projects and loans. The liberal magazine The New Republic says this kind of pork furthers leftist causes like universal health care, domestic partnerships and tax increases. The New Republic writer points out that in 1993 the only way President Clinton got his tax hike through Congress was by promising tax-funded goodies to Senators like Dianne Feinstein.
Did any Democrats vote for this bill? In fact, Barack Obama is a co-sponsor with Tom Coburn. The FRC is purportedly a religious group, but their true devotion is to the Republican party. So Republican legislators can share credit with bipartisan citizens, but no Democrats can be named -- especially a liberal icon like Obama.
The New Republic is a liberal magazine? That's like calling Andrew Sullivan a liberal blogger. Is this liberal? There's an easy Google search to track down how liberal The New Republic really is.
So, the legislation is designed to help track government spending and thereby reduce pork. Pork is in the eye of the beholder, but there are some limits. Ted Stevens's bridge to nowhere? I think we all agree that's pork. But universal health care? If providing health care is pork, then lump Medicare and Medicaid and the VA into the barrel. You certainly can have give-aways and bad legislation in these areas -- see Medicare Part D -- but any time you provide an essential service, it can't be called pork.
Domestic partnerships and tax increases? What the hell is he talking about? Is Ted Kennedy giving away bridges to recognize gay marriages?
Perkins argues that the database will prevent tax increases, because you can only get tax increases by promising favors to legislators (like, say, promising support for sugar beet farmers to pass CAFTA). Perkins has to go all the way back to 1993 to find an example of how this database will improve our lives.
What's missing from the story is the actual people have been in charge of the purse-strings. Since Republicans have controlled the Congress, pork spending has skyrocketed. Perkins won't mention that. He doesn't want to educate his following -- he wants to indoctrinate them. I really wouldn't care if he didn't wrap himself in Christ while doing it.
