Posted on 08/12/2011 3:28:51 PM PDT by topher
The Debt Panels Profligate Pork Patty Murray Problem
By Michelle Malkin August 12, 2011 10:34 AM
House minority leader Nancy Pelosi rounds out the Super Debt Panel of Stupid today with her three hack picks. My column today focuses on the panels Democratic co-chair, my old Senator from Washington state: Profligate Pork Patty Murray.
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The Debt Panels Patty Murray Problem
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011
Everything thats wrong with the so-called debt super-committee can be summed up in the person, partisan hackery and policy ignorance of Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid named Murray co-chair of the dog-and-pony deficit-reduction panel tasked with identifying $1.5 trillion in spending cuts by late November. Murray, an unrepentant Nanny State cheerleader and patron saint of the Washington lobbyist, is a double-exclamation point on the debt deals rotten joke.
Charlie Brown had Peppermint Patty. America has U.S. Mint Patty. This is a career politician who has never met a special interest that shouldnt be supported by taxpayers. Derided for her earmark addiction by both conservative and liberal civic groups, she has cemented her position as the Senate Queen of Pork over 18 gluttonous years in office.
Murray takes perverse pride in increasing debt limits on pet projects in her home state. Her solution to our fiscal crisis: Spend, borrow, spend and borrow some more! In 2009, she stuffed the Obama porkulus with a $3.25 billion provision benefiting the federal Bonneville Power Administration by massively expanding its spending authority. Murray then claimed to have spurred immediate job creation. But the left-leaning Seattle Times countered that even without the new stimulus package, BPA was expected to begin construction of some new transmission lines this year. And, despite claims the added spending power will quickly create jobs, construction of many of the new power lines wouldnt start for several years.
The real impediment to construction progress? Onerous regulation, regulation, regulation. BPA insiders acknowledged that no one was actually pushing for the debt-limit increase. But Murray has an old habit of forking over unsolicited pork. National Reviews Andrew Stiles reports that she once inserted a $4.5 million earmark for a Naval speedboat it didnt want: The Navy ended up giving the boat to the University of Washington, which couldnt find a use for it either. Top executives at Guardian Marine International, the company that built the boat, later gave $15,000 to Murrays campaign.
Profligate Patty is a slavish adherent of federal entitlements for every American (and illegal alien) from cradle to grave except, of course, for the unborn targets of Murrays fanatical sisters at Planned Parenthood.
When House Republicans challenged public funding for the $1 billion abortion industry giant (which rakes in one-third of its budget from government grants and contracts at both the state and federal levels), Murray led the defense. It was stunning to her as a woman, she raged, that fiscal conservatives would challenge Planned Parenthoods sacred subsidies. As if only men are capable of questioning the insatiable appetite of a predatory racket disguised as a reproductive and womens health care provider.
The fabled outsider mom in tennis shoes has morphed over the past two decades into just another Beltway swamp insider in sensible heels. Murray has earned the scorn not just of right-wing taxpayer groups, but also of left-wing watchdogs who flagged her 17 revolving-door staffers-turned-lobbyists and fundraising conflicts of interest. Murray, you see, is the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and refuses to cease her money-grubbing while she serves on the debt panel.
It really sends a bad message to the American people when youre the chief fundraiser trying to come up with this balanced approach to deficit reduction, Adam Smith, communications director of Public Campaign, told The Hill newspaper. Shes going to be focused on this committee and also on fundraising? Will she make decisions based on whether it hurts the fundraising ability of the (DSCC)? Do pigs oink? Duh.
The Democratic leaderships top priority isnt to get Americas fiscal house in order. It is, as one aide candidly told The Hill, to continue to raise resources to grow and preserve our majority.
Above all else, Murray is a glaring symbol of the Democratic Partys intellectual bankruptcy when it comes to solving our entitlement mess. More than a decade ago, while I served as the youngest member of the Seattle Times editorial board, I asked her about the disproportionate burden that FICA taxes imposed on Generation X and low-income workers. I wanted to know if she supported creative alternatives to the Social Security system like the opt-out plan adopted by the cities of Bellevue, Wash., and Galveston, Texas.
FICA? she repeated with a puzzled glance at her entourage of D.C. staffers.
You know, payroll taxes, I added helpfully.
Response: Deer in the headlights.
Only when young and future workers have K Street lobbyists will Pork Patty get a clue.
Everything thats wrong with the so-called debt super-committee can be summed up in the person, partisan hackery and policy ignorance of Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray.
Something to remember and quote... Need to have Tea Party Express and Tea Party promote this line on the internet along with the information in this article.
Oh, I forgot. Juan McCain, the great RINO-nose of the Republican party, thinks these folks are Hobbits.
Well, in the Lord of the Rings, Hobbits helped to defeat great evil and those who sought great power (power that the rings gave them)...
Maybe the Taxed Enough Already crowd might defeat the great evil found in Washington...
This from 2009
Patty Murray Rated Most Liberal Senator in New Vote Rating
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/most-liberal-senator/2009/02/27/id/328503
Maybe this image or another image of Senator Patty Murray needs to be PhotoShopped with a Pork theme.
And then one could also PhotoShop an image of Juan McCain with a RINO-nose...
Its a tax hike committee, it was from the start
If the recommendations from this panel include any new spending rather than cuts, or any attempt to raise taxes, it will be a failure and the GOP members should take it out of the back rooms and keep the people informed of how the Dims are straying from the mandate.
Let the people see that even when given a specific mandate to cut spending, the Dims refuse to do it.
Ppsst ...hey Patty, you have FREE dental as a member of the beltway leeches
I think they should have just thrown away baseline budgeting, had every member of Congress create his own prioritized list of all budget items, and then combined them all into a database to get a single prioritized list. Each item subtracts from the ACTUAL total revenues from the previous year, and when there is no more money, everything below the line is eliminated unless its proponents can squeeze funding out of the defenders of a higher priority item. Deciding to fund items based on their merits alone assumes there is an unlimited supply of money. It never made sense to do it that way.
That is vile! She reminds me of the gym coach from “Seinfeld” who calls George “cant’ stand ja” and gives him an atomic wedgie. The coach’s distinguishing feature is “little baked bean teeth.”
Supposedly dumber than a sack of rocks
IIRC was named the dumbest member of Senate.....
That makes him Saruman, the once-powerful white wizard who gave up in the face of the enemy's apparent might and turned to the dark side. ;)
Wasn’t her that said the GOP thinks illegal aliens are breaking the law ?
Close. It was the vile, despicable Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, head of the DNC.
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