The most unkindest cut of all

By A.J. DiCintio

Yes, the title contains a double superlative, a horror according to current usage.

But sometimes a cut (as one was long ago) is so shockingly outrageous it's not just permissible to describe it with the same double-barreled emphasis Shakespeare was able to utilize in perfect conformity with the rules of Elizabethan English, it's obligatory.

With those linguistic and ethical matters now out of the way, I'll get right to the contemporary issue on my mind:

A 2012 budget wielding Barack Obama has proposal to freeze some parts of the federal budget for five years (business as usual afterward) as a key factor in getting the nation to 2022 with an annual deficit "only" half as large as the current $1.5 trillion shortfall.

Now, when a politician who is hailed by those he enthralls as a paragon of post-everything brilliance tells us the path to fiscal responsibility lies (1) in increasing federal debt from $14 trillion to $22 trillion over the next decade (not counting $1 to $2 trillion deliberately understated in his healthcare "reform" plan) and (2) continuing huge deficits forever, he is engaging in a most unkind act of treacherous knifing.

But when, despite being aware of the facts (as any president, let alone a brilliant one, must be), that same politician intentionally fails to tell the truth about the rapaciously obese hog whose mountainous volume of swill he proposes to freeze for five years (before turning the larded abomination loose to resume its revolting slopping), he's guilty of meting out the most unkindest cut of all.

There will be, of course, some who think that assertion too harsh both in substance and style.

But except for the power loving or airheaded ideologues among them, they will change their minds as soon as they consider "Billions in Bloat Uncovered in Beltway" a piece in which Damian Paletta (WSJ) reports some of the findings the Government Accountability Office discovered in a study of duplicative federal government programs.

The following provides a taste of the duplication.

. . . "15 different agencies [to oversee] food-safety laws, more than 20 . . . to help the homeless and 80 [to promote] economic development"

. . . "82 . . . to improve teacher quality; 80 to help disadvantaged people with transportation; 47 [to promote] job training and employment; and 56 to help people understand finances"

. . . "18 [to provide] food and nutrition assistance"

. . . "five divisions within the Department of Transportation [accounting] for 100 different programs [to] fund things like highways, rail projects and safety programs"

. . . "82 [teacher quality] programs . . . spread across 10 federal agencies"

. . . "80 different economic development programs"

Considering all the redundancy the GAO uncovered, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), who deserves thanks for insisting upon the study, estimates the waste produced at $100 to $200 billion annually.

However, you don't have to be the president or a senator to "know" the federal government wastes at least $200 billion every year —

If you can be honest about how human nature works in the minds of politicians, including the reality that those creatures obsessively create make-work programs designed to keep the "essential employees" hired to administer them and the citizens who receive their benefits voting the "right" way.

If you can be honest about the fact that politicians have presided, during the past 40 years, over a mad growth that currently has Washington spending $3.8 trillion annually.

And if you can be honest about the simple math telling us that if just 10% of the $3.8 trillion is wasted or stolen (both legally and illegally), the sum amounts to $380 billion or, with growth factored in, more than $4 trillion over a decade.

(Perhaps Senator Everett Dirksen never did make the famous satirical statement attributed to him in the sixties; nevertheless, it's worth modernizing it to say, "A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you're talking real money!")

So there it is. The president who day after day employed lofty speeches to give voice to an entire campaign promising "change" is the same president who during the depths of the most profound economic calamity since the Great Depression turned the writing of the "stimulus" bill over to his cronies in Congress, thereby allowing every political hack of his party to ignore the triumph of reason in favor of the triumph of rancid pork.

He is the same president who practiced similar disgusting old school politics when he invited congressional Democrats to lie through their teeth not just about the healthcare bill's true multi-trillion dollar cost but the danger that lies in its stupendous bloating of federal power, for example, by extending the reach of the gigantic amorphous gel that is the autocratic federal bureaucracy to require "diversity" in healthcare hiring.

And now he is the same president who, fully aware of the dangerous condition of the hog that has swilled itself sick by sucking up an ocean of debt, tells us the porker needs to lose not an ounce of weight.

It may be an easy thing to say for the kind of president who loudly insists to this day that honest, fair healthcare reform requires not one cent from the coffers of the trial lawyer industry.

But to the people who will ultimately pay the price of the hoggishness Barack Obama chooses to ignore, it truly represents the most unkindest cut of all because its implications apply to the survival of an entire culture, not as it did 2,000 years ago to one man, however distinguished and important Julius was.

© A.J. DiCintio