Choke On These Numbers

By William L. Garvin

Chew on these numbers and then see if you can choke them down. The projected revenue for the Federal government in 2011 is $2.174 trillion dollars. The projected spending for the same period is $3.82 trillion dollars. That means the deficit will be $1.65 trillion dollars for this year alone! Last month alone, the Federal government spent eight times more than it received. That is pathetic.

Let’s forget for the moment that last year’s Democrat President, Democrat House, and Democrat Senate were unable (or refused) to pass a budget before the fiscal year started October 1, 2010. Let’s forget that the new Republican House is cleaning up the Obama-Reid-Pelosi fiscal mess that the last Congress left behind. Let’s look at how the parties are reacting to the $14 trillion (and climbing) national debt.

The Democrats proposed ZERO spending cuts and supported raising the debt ceiling so they can continue their profligate spending ways. With Tea Party urging, the Republicans started off with their election charter of $100 million in spending cuts. The predictable liberal outrage gurgled out like clockwork. Nancy Pelosi prophesied that six million shut-in seniors would no longer have meals. Where did you get those numbers, Nancy? They’re pure poppycock. Harry Reid said Republicans wanted to “throw women under the bus” and “prevent them from having cancer screenings.” The King of the Cowboy Poets must have been rolling his own with some of that funny tobacco to even be able to say that with a straight face. Regurgitating the Democrat talking points, Eleanor Holmes Norton said a shutdown would be equivalent to “bombing innocent civilians.” Not to be outdone, Democrat lemming and Representative Louise Slaughter brayed that the newly elected House Republicans were here “…to kill women.” After all these insane verbal histrionics, a “historic cut” of $38.5 billion was agreed upon. Folks, this is a whopping 1% reduction in the gigantic 28% increase in the President’s spending plan for this year. That is beyond pathetic; it’s also insignificant.

The majority of the liberal angst festered because the Republicans targeted National Public Radio and Planned Parenthood for specific cuts. So let’s look at the numbers for the latter. In their annual report for 2009, Planned Parenthood received $363.2 million in government grants and contracts. According to their records, during that same year, they performed 332,278 abortions. That is to say, they terminated an unborn child every ninety-five seconds for the entire year! That is equivalent to eliminating an entire population of a city the size of Honolulu or New Orleans or Anaheim or Tampa one by one by one. The President intervened in Libya for “humanitarian reasons” for a mere fraction of our own human loss.

The most recent polls show that 51% of Americans regard themselves as pro-life. When it comes to whether or not government health care should fund abortions, a whopping 67% oppose such action. Only 27% support the government funding of abortions. Many of the freshmen legislators are responding to their electorate who do not want their tax dollars used to kill someone else’s baby! Of course it’s ideology…but then continuing to fund the war against the most vulnerable members of our society in opposition to the majority of Americans’ wishes is also ideological. The aforementioned (and ironically named) Representative Slaughter is apoplectic about a contrived and imaginary threat to women but absolutely insensitive to the real deaths of female and male babies.

With that type of moral ambivalence it’s no surprise that Democrats would also throw our American servicemen and women under the bus as a bargaining chip in the budget negotiations. Republicans were appropriately incensed when the President said he would veto a bill to insure our military personnel would be paid even in the event of a government shutdown. Holding our military and their families hostage during a time of war to further a political goal destroyed the last shred of confidence that may have existed for this Commander in Chief. Given the callous disregard this Administration displays toward the unborn and the military, don’t be surprised when the seniors become the next target! Can you say “death panels” through bureaucratic neglect?