Pay As You Go? Not The GOP!

Have a look at this. This is the roll call for the US Senate amendments to a House bill that would reinstate pay-as-you-go fiscal responsibility. In other words, if you want 'X' in the budget, you have to provide some means of funding it, either throu cuts elsewhere or raising taxes.

Look at how the GOP senators voted, and see "fiscal responsibility" as it's voted upon rather than how it's shouted on FOX "news" programs.

Not one single Republican voted for the amendments. Not one. Some of you are going to read this and say, "But the bill didn't go far enough." or some such thing. I would buy that except that there was not one bit of deviance from the obstructionist GOP response we have seen since Obama became president. It also is a strikingly clear of the fiscal behavior of Republicans in power since before Reagan (George H. W. Bush gets due props for attempting fiscal restraint and raising taxes to pay for what he wanted, but he also got hung out to dry by his party for exactly that behavior.)

The simple fact is that Democrats have become the party of fiscal responsibility. You may not like what they want to spend money on, but they are generally serious about funding their plans. The GOP has forsaken all claim to being the party that spends wisely. The GOP has become the party that Borrows-and-Spends, passing the burden on to subsequent generations or having faith that later boom year will refill the coffers. Exhibits number One and Two for my case: The unfunded, not even budgeted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Exhibit Three is the unfunded Medicare expansion, the single largest entitlement expansion since FDR.

The Democrat's tax-and-spend mindset is at least sane.