USA Today : Will storms jolt Congress into financial sanity?

[TechBear_Seattle]

I've always found USA Today to be moderately conservative and distinctly pro-Republican. Imagine my surprise to find this editorial today:

Listening to lawmakers call for spending cuts to finance rebuilding along the Gulf Coast brings to mind the famous scene of hypocrisy in Casablanca. Lacking a better pretext for closing Rick's Café, the corruptible Capt. Renault declares: "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" Just then a café employee hands him a bag and says, "Your winnings, sir."

The current hypocrisy is that lawmakers who participated in the spending, borrowing and tax-cutting binge that put the nation in hock are now clamoring for spending cuts to offset storm costs. They, like Capt. Renault, have a hard time claiming the moral high ground.

To put things in context, estimated costs of hurricanes Katrina and Rita of $250 billion equal about 15% of the $1.7 trillion the government has borrowed in the past three years. Eliminating all "pork" from the recently enacted highway law, a much-discussed option, would cover only 10% of the hurricane price tag - even if Congress would do it, which is highly unlikely. For those reasons, it's tempting to treat these calls for cost-cutting with skepticism, if not scorn.

And yet we don't have that luxury. With the national debt at $7.9 trillion just as things are about to worsen with retirement of baby boomers, Washington needs to get religion on fiscal restraint fast.

The editorial continues at http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20050927/cm_usatoday/willstormsjoltcongressintofinancialsanity

To think, I've lived to see the day when I look back at Barry Goldwater's small-government, fiscally responsible brand of conservatism with nostalgia.

[bemildred]

1. You can't train pigs to fly. nt

[tom_paine]

2. Bushevikism is about bankrupting the nation and reverting to the 1890s

perhaps the 1590s.

USAToday is so puzzled becuase they, like most of Imperial Amerika, cannot fathom an Imperial Class who's very ideology wishes to destroy America, first by bankrupting it.

They will be more confused as time goes by and the last renants of the Old Republic (with the possible exception of the Imperial Senate and elections -- except these will be as fake as the Nazis' 1934 plebiscite).

[_Winston_Smith_101]

3. Raise taxes on the wealthy!

Pay off the national debt!

[indepat]

4. The hypocrisy depicted in Casablanca is mere child's play to what Congress

is doing.