pinions of buddy don: contrack? whut contrack?

mayhap ye member that contrack on amurka newt gingrich n his bunch tuck out on us all to hep em win a majorty in the house of reps fer the furst time in 40 odd years. mayhap ye dont, witch that putts ye in good cumpny: tiz a shame how the ones that seems to have dun fergut it the most are them that wuz eleckted by a'usin it.

in case ye dun fergut sum of it, heres a lil reminder of whut it spozedly stood fer, witch they had em set up to pass on thar furst day in majorty:

FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress;

SECOND, select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;

THIRD, cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;

FOURTH, limit the terms of all committee chairs;

FIFTH, ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;

SIXTH, require committee meetings to be open to the public;

SEVENTH, require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;

EIGHTH, guarantee an honest accounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting.

as ye probly noticed, numbers first, secunt, third, fourth, sixth n eighth dont seem to have lasted all that long. but mayhap they wuz easier to advocate ifn ye dint have the power to make em wurk. as we know, ye kin find eggcepshuns to ever one i listed, speshly numbers sixth n eighth.

but that aint all thay wuz in that contrack. thay wuz also this:

THE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT
A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and a legislative line-item veto to restore fiscal responsibility to an out-of-control Congress, requiring them to live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses.

now as everbidy knows, them publicans won the house n then the senate n then even the presdincy. so wuz they able to brang about inny fiscull responsibilty?

not hardly.

ye kin tell by lookin at that bill the presdint went up to dennis hasters home state of illannoy to sine, witch ye kin read about it in the washinton post articull name of Road Bill Reflects The Power Of Pork; White House Drops Effort to Rein In Hill. ye mite wooda thunk the presdint wood veto it. he tole them congressmen back in 2002 how they better not send im a bill that wood cost over $256 billyuns n ifn thay did, he wood veto it.

later on, he give em a brake n tole em they could grow it up to $284 billyuns n no more. so they sent im one fer $286 billyuns. whut did he do? passed on the chants to use his furst veto:

Bush brushed aside pleas from taxpayer groups to veto the bill, which exceeded the $284 billion limit that he had vowed not to cross.

by doin that, he avoided innybidy accusin im of havin the courage of a feller lack raygun, witch as ye mite know, he vetoed a hiway bill that cum in with 152 earmarks (pork):

But hundreds of millions of dollars will be channeled to programs that critics say have nothing to do with improving congestion or efficiency: $2.3 million for the beautification of the Ronald Reagan Freeway in California; $6 million for graffiti elimination in New York; nearly $4 million on the National Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio, and the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich.; $2.4 million on a Red River National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center in Louisiana; and $1.2 million to install lighting and steps and to equip an interpretative facility at the Blue Ridge Music Center, to name a few.

"There are nearly 6,500 member-requested projects worth more than $24 billion, nearly nine percent of the total spending," executives from six taxpayer and conservative groups complained in a letter to Bush urging that he use his veto pen for the first time. They noted that Reagan vetoed a transportation bill in 1987 because there were 152 such special requests, known in the parlance of congressional budgeting as "earmarks."

corse, ye gut to cunsidder everthang. as ye mite know by now, bush is in a race with lyndon baines johnson to be the presdint that grew the gummint the fastest in histry. ifn ye kin take such a read, i recommend ye dip into The Grand Old Spending Party; How Republicans Became Big Spenders by Stephen Slivinski. ifn ye do, yer a'gone larn this kinda thang: when that librul tax n spend dimcrat name of bill clinton tuck offus in 1993, spendin by the fedrul gummint wuz 21.4% of the gdp. by the time he wuz dun wreckin the gummin spendin machine, that had dun shrunk to jes 18.5%. shameful performunts, i know, but he dun whut he could.

lucky fer them that wonts a bigger gummint, george w bush gut in the white house in 2000 on a victry that give im half a millyun fewer votes than his opponent but a 5-4 majorty of supremes. jes to proov his strangth n the grater power of borry n spend over tax n spend, bush gut busy n after jes four years, he gut gummint spendin up to 20.3% of gdp.

hes dun cum close to beatin lbj, cummin purty close in jes four years to doin whut lbj dun in five!:

Ranking the Presidents

When discussing how fast the federal government has grown during the presidency of George W. Bush, it’s important to put things in historical context. Figure 3 ranks the presidents over the past 40 years in terms of annualized growth in inflation-adjusted total federal outlays. By that standard, George W. Bush is the biggest-spending president since Lyndon B. Johnson.5
That ranking is interesting for at least two reasons. First, the calculation includes spending on Medicare, one of the most expensive entitlement programs in American history.

Figure 3 charts budget growth only during each year of Bush’s first term in office (i.e., through fiscal year 2005), so it does not include the full impact of increased spending that will start in fiscal 2006 as a result of the president’s prescription drug benefit, the largest expansion of Medicare since its inception.

The drug benefit is expected to cost more than $720 billion over 10 years and far more in subsequent years.6 In fact, spending on Medicare jumps by 17 percent for fiscal 2006 in Bush’s new budget, one of the largest spending increases in the program since 1982.7 The Congressional Budget Office estimates that net spending on the drug benefit will rise from $2 billion in 2005 to $32.8 billion in 2006.8.

Second, Bush has signed into law only four budgets so far, whereas Lyndon Johnson signed five into law during his presidency. In other words, Bush and a Republican Congress have expanded the federal government almost as fast as did Johnson and a Democratic Congress—and in less time.

i caint figger out how to git that figger three in here, sos ye mite half to foller that lank to git toot, but heres whut it sez bout the 'Real Annual Growth Rate of Total Government Outlays by President' [p. 4]:

• johnson: 5.7%
• gw bush: 5.0%
• carter: 4.1%
• nixon: 3.0%
• raygun: 2.6%
• ghw bush: 1.9%
• clinton: 1.5%

corse, the 5.0% bush gits credit fer is on a bigger gummint than innybidy befor im, so ye mite could say he is the champeen. even ifn he aint, by showin his retraint in never usin the veto, in wurkin with a congress that dont thank ye kin spend a nuff, he has a verr good chants of cummin in furst place all time!

lemme see ifn i gut that contrack strate. now that them publicans has cuntrol over ever branch of gummint, they kin putt this into practiss:

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT

A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and a legislative line-item veto to restore fiscal responsibility to an out-of-control Congress, requiring them to live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses.

this heres one of them situwayshuns whar this ignernt hillbilly caint understand how thar a'doin it, but they must be on a counta they tole us they wood n thar the ones with values that bleeves in practissin whut ye preach n not lyin or killin or violatin inny of them ten commandments.

i fergit now: wuz them re-attitudes in that thar contrack?