Rand Paul: "We're compromising all the time to spend more money."

David Weigel at Slate on Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) complaining about his party's attitude toward military spending cuts, the day after Dick Cheney tried to talk Republicans' into dumping a looming $700 billion in military spending cuts called for by a past "sequestering" deal:  

"Most people in our conference," said Paul, "are on the side [that thinks] that they need to do anything now to avoid the military sequester. I think there is a little bit of irony in that most of them voted for the military sequester. I didn't vote for it. They all voted to raise the debt ceiling with a military sequester, and now they're all basically caterwauling about it."

….In order to extend the debt limit through to 2013, most Republicans and Democrats eventually agreed to $1.4 trillion of "triggered" cuts—sequesters. Half of the money would be taken out of domestic discretionary spending over 10 years; half would be taken from the defense budget over 10 years, a slash of around 8 percent….

"They seem to say, 'Well, we are for certain revisions to make the military more efficient,' " said Paul. "I'm of the belief that nothing around you will ever be efficient unless the top line number is lower. So, they don't like what they call sequester. To me, that means that the top line number is lower, and if you really believe in savings in the military budget or else you'd have to find the savings, you'd be forced to find the savings. If they could offset it with true one-to-one spending cuts somewhere else, I might consider supporting that. If it's like most of the games they play around here—they give us cuts over 10 years to pay for something over one year—I'm not going to vote for that, because really, we're going back on what we promised the American people during that whole battle was that we're going to be more fiscally responsible."

Paul didn't take a position on the Ryan "sequester replacement." That plan won't make it through the Senate, anyway. But he disagreed with it in spirit. "Conservatives defend military spending," he said. "Liberals defend domestic spending. The idea [is] that both sides get together and compromises and we reduce all spending … and right now, and really for the last 50 years, we've done the opposite. Our compromise has always been: We raise military spending and we raise domestic welfare spending. So when people say we're not compromising, they're missing it completely. We're compromising all the time to spend more money."

Peter Suderman from November 2010 on Republicans who support defense cuts.

Comments

[Mr. FIFY]

Right on. Cut ALL spending, just a few pennies on the dollar at first if you must, but cut *all* spending.

And leave tax rates where they are, if nothing else.

[Brutus]

I'd be willing to see my taxes go up, so long as there is a 10:1 reduction in the ****current**** year's spending. Not next year, not some promise to save money a decade from now. THIS FUCKING YEAR.

So mustard, if you grasping fascists want my money, cut your spending.

[Almanian's Evil Twin]

We're compromising all the time to spend more money.

There it is, in a nutshell.

Compromise = "let's spend more on BOTH our pet projects - everybody wins!"

Except the American People?. Of course, they keep voting for this shit, so FUCK YOU, TOO, AMERICAN PEOPLE!

[Apatheist ?_??]

Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., translated Cheney's argument that defense spending is "not a spigot you can turn on and turn off, that you need to keep money flowing in a predictable way so you can plan for the next war."

*barf*

[mustard]

2016 can't come fast enough so we can get all the teabagger kooks out of Congress. In 2116 they'll look back at them like we look at the Know Nothings.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

I guess you're not planning on 2012 and 2014 going your way, then?

[Peter L]

The senators elected in 2010 don't come up for a vote until 2016. Since 2012 will rid us of the teabaggers in the house, the 2016 election will clear out the last of them.

[Dr. Frankenstein]

Sorry that is incorrect the word you're looking for is conspiring.

[16th amendment]

In her website http://www.emken2012.com/issues/, Emken, who is running for CA senate against millionaire Feinstein says:

"
Q: How would you balance the budget?

A: You have to look at everything. There is no government agency that cannot be reduced in some form...
"

A mainstream republican saying that is a good thing. Whether she would deliver on that promise is another thing.

It annoys me how the media refer to republican candidates as millionaires, but not likewise for democrats, so I've decided to break that tradition.

[ant1sthenes]

"I'm of the belief that nothing around you will ever be efficient unless the top line number is lower."

Cutting the budget isn't enough -- the butthurt bureaucracy isn't going to take that as a challenge to trim the fat, they're going to take it as a personal slight, and find passive aggressive ways to punish you by shutting down popular and functional things and then blaming it on budget cuts. That's as true in the military as any other government program.

You need both a budget cut, and a boot on the throat of the bureaucrats to force them to be responsible, and you need to make it clear that if they can't find fat to trim, they probably are part of the fat (which means you need to be able to back that threat up, which requires the support of executive branch leadership).

[HazelMeade]

Once again, I am completely right in my predictions of Congress's behavior.

A year ago after the debt deal I said that the deal was bullshit, there would be no agreement from the bipartisan comission, and then congress would have a year to repeal the promised cuts. Which would be easy to do in an election year.

And that is exactly what happened.
My only hope is that partisan gridlock will force those cuts to actually take place. But even that is unlikely because we're going to have a lame-duck congress after november.

You see how the government sets itself up so that it never has to cut anything. It promises future cuts in order to make budget projections look better, then un-cuts them before they actually happen.

My new prediction is that they will make some more even-further-in-the-future cuts to replace the cuts they are going back on. And then repeal those cuts in a year or two. Repeat ad nauseum.

[Enjoy Every Sandwich]

But...but...we're suffering under the terrible austerity of draconian budget cuts! Just ask Tony! Failing to increase the budget at a "progressive" rate is actually cutting it to the bone!

To the bone, I tells ya!

[mad libertarian guy]

So Paul is for allowing states to decide on drug policy, cutting the military budget substantially, getting rid of the TSA, and curbing domestic spying and other nefarious bullshit brought on by 9/11 (Patriot Act et al), yet liberals hate him and his very small wing of Congress (basically him, his father, and a couple of others - some of them Democrats) more than anyone else, ostensibly because he also favors abortion being a state issue.

How the fuck is he not the most popular man in Congress? I know Kentuckians who think he's the most evil man in the world. Every issue that he supports that they might agree with meets the "even a broken clock . . ." response. Except that, even according to their standards (which are designed to be too high for ANYONE on Team RED - particularly those who associate themselves with the Tea Party), he's right more often than not.

[Peter L]

They hate him because he has an R in front of his name. He does not support uber-taxing the wealthy to pay for everybody else. He stopped that bill named after some kid that overdosed on drugs. He is a doctor, which means he is rich, which means he is part of the 1%, which means he is a horrid person that should have all his money taken by the government!