The Debt Panel’s Profligate Pork Patty Murray Problem
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 panel’s Democratic co-chair, my old Senator from Washington state: Profligate Pork Patty Murray.
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The Debt Panel’s Patty Murray Problem
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011
Everything that’s 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 deal’s 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 shouldn’t 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 wouldn’t 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 Review’s Andrew Stiles reports that she once inserted a $4.5 million earmark for a Naval speedboat it didn’t want: “The Navy ended up giving the boat to the University of Washington, which couldn’t find a use for it either. Top executives at Guardian Marine International, the company that built the boat, later gave $15,000 to Murray’s 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 Murray’s 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 Parenthood’s sacred subsidies. As if only men are capable of questioning the insatiable appetite of a predatory racket disguised as a “reproductive and women’s 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 you’re 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. “She’s 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 leadership’s top priority isn’t to get America’s 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 Party’s 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.
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Hangfire said:
I mean, there’s dumb and then there’s clinically brain dead. I’m still struggling w/ MM’s FICA run-in Murray? None of us can be expected to recall ‘every’ acronym on the planet. For future ref. Patty: http://www.acronymslist.com/
But these fall under “Super Acronyms”. Ones everyone should know. Everyone over 14 anyway. Not sure I could’ve restrained an involuntary eye roll?
Why do they need a commission? Why not just cut spending across the board to pre ‘emergency’ levels in 2008?
Cut to 2008 spending and go from there to balance the budget.
The thing that makes me most mad about the debate about 14T in debt. . . Democrats don’t think it is a problem. . . but imagine if we had 14T in reserves. Rather than paying interest, we could be getting that ever so elusive ‘REVENUE ENHANCEMENT’ in interest earned on the national surplus. If it got high enough theoretically we could eliminate taxes and run the government off the savings.
It’s not a hard fix if you have the will to do it.
hawkeye54 said:
Shows how much YOU two know? O.J has been controlling women thru the power of his Lecter-like intellect from behind bars for years! Like Obama his hipness transcends traditional mediums.
Doesn’t know what FICA is.
We are in SUCH deep stuff, for SO many reasons. This is just frosting on the [stuff] cake…
Of course.
We’ve been in deep “stuff” for decades.
Yeah…I just keep being astonished at how we keep mucking about in it…
The picture of her on this post captures that look perfectly.
The super panel is a hoax. The debt deal was a hoax. Everything this Congress does is a hoax. The only thing that is going to save this country is a Republican filibuster proof 60 seat majority in the Senate, a majority in the House, and a Repub in the WH. Otherwise these ducking nuts on the left side of the aisle are going to destroy the US completely. They are almost there.
Yup, its as if a lot of us have been walking around for the longest time with it’s level rising up to our lips, all muttering quietly, “don’t make waves”.
Hawk, ever occur… to you that murdering and manipulating women in their physical form no longer presented a challenge for Mr. Simpson?
He’s in prison b/c he wants to be in prison! Just ask Ward Weaver, he’ll tell you?
sarc/
Well, I have to tell you it boggles the mind that intellect and OJ can be associated with each other in the same sentence.
Also drives a Subaru, and constantly drifts to left side of the road.
If Washington State could just drive the Migrating California liberals out of their State and back to California, Washington and the restof us would not have people like Pork Patty in office.
If Washington State could just drive the Migrating California liberals out of their State and back to California, Washington and the restof us would not have people like Pork Patty in office.
Better yet, drive them west off the nearest seaside bluff. The survivors can try to swim back to California.
Then somebody could go out and chum in a few sharks…..
Don’t forget Jim McDermott.
I will never forget, we were shopping at the local Mall and what do we overhear, “Well, in California we have a better selection of everything and this place is so provincial” several bystanders said the same thing almost at once, “well then, nobody is stopping you from going back to California and take some of your friends with you”. By the way, this was in Kansas.
PeePee Patty has not a care in the world about taxpayer’s “money”. She is interested in only ONE thing (like every liberal ever elected to anything) reelection. FICA? FICA? Who the hell is FICA?
It would be hard to place any lofty expectations on Patty Murray, who obviously has her shortcomings, but if she really cared about our military, she would be on the committee to raise funds for this effort instead!
Harry and Nan have packed the Democrat slots on the committee with people who will accept no cuts and insist on tax increases. The committee is doomed to failure.
Exactly as intended.
Bingo, Hawkeye. The sad part is the GOP is in in the scam.
Where does this myth keep coming from? Waaay back in the day, Seattle at least was chock full of Big Labor, FDR lefties. Dumb-as-post pseudo-intellectuals littered the place. Has it changed?
All too true…..None of it is Dem versus Repub…….It is Ruling Class politicians versus Citizens.
the picture of this female drone is once again proof conservative women are much better looking that liberal woman.
You got that right, Buddy.
If Martina Navratilova and Tom Petty had an illegitimate child, it would look like Patty.
On August 12th, 2011 at 6:42 pm, rightisright said:
the picture of this female drone is once again proof conservative women are much better looking that liberal woman.
Got that sheite right, right.
Major “King” Kong: Well, I’ve been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard come
over a set of earphonesout of Washington!She’s one of those people who could walk into a storage space and immediately improve the self-esteem of the sacks-full of hammers and boxes of rocks contained therein by virtue of her level of intelligence.
Someow, I had not considered the possibility of, get ready for it, tens of thousands of earmarks in this ‘budget negotiation deal’!
Will there be 72 hours for review or will this bill somehow require a last minute vote without anyone ever admitting to stuffing their Christmass Turducken into this piece of legislation?
Patty is this or that. Dude looks like a lady or is it lady looks like a dude?
This is a very lovely Christian (Catholic) song:
The Super Debt Panel is a stupid idea as was pointed out in the debate by Newt – secret negotiations won’t fly any more, it should be all out in the open and in the whole Congress.
The Dems cannot and will not change. They still believe in tax and spend. There is no meeting of the minds possible, no compromise is acceptable, with people who are incapable or unwilling to understand and follow our Constitution.
The Dems are not people with whom the Republicans should attempt to make sausage. They need to be defeated politically, with no compromise of our principles and no meeting them halfway – every time we give in to Dem demands, we are one mile farther down the slippery slope to socialism.
This is a stark reminder that you don’t have to be qualified for anything or even reasonably intelligent to be a member of Congress, and stay there indefinitely. You only have to remain compliant and do as you are told. Truly horrifying.
My father was very close to Scoop Jackson and Warren Magnusen back in the ’50s. They were all patriots and gifted men of sound character. This generation of scoundrels has totally polluted the institution. Time for that change we hear so much about.
It doesn’t seem to be a Murray problem as much as it is an electorate problem. Everybody knows that she is dumber then a box of rocks, but the “useful idiots” keep electing her. That doesn’t say much for the State of Washington. Of course there are many states in this Union that keep electing fools just like her so the problem is nation wide.
A stupid expenditure of money, but this is why free markets and capitalism works. People are free to spend and work to the full limits of their hearts’ desire. When an outside force, malevolent or not, imposes its wiil – bad things always happen.
You cannot control the minds of large populations of people, and that is where healthy economies begin and end, not on the greenbar sheets of commissars. This is why government must be severely constrained within carefully scripted boundaries.
As I said earlier in the thread yesterday, the Washington mafia machine is behind her (which also was instrumental in getting Franken in office.) campaigns. She could be stuffed and sitting on a mantlepiece and they would still get her re-elected.
Washington State was once only mildly fiscally liberal. Very strong socially and very pro national defense. Due to the full-court Californication press on the Northwest over the last 40 years, Oregon and Washington have been totally coopted by the Marxists. The remaining conservative peoples are like the indians, stranded on small scattered reservations.
I came across this analysis of “Atlas Shrugged part 1″ a few minutes ago.
At the end, the analyzer asks a very significant question.
At about 06:36, he asks,
That same question needs to be asked of Republicans and conservatives. Why do we continue to cooperate with those who have demonstrated, time and again, a loathing for everything we are and believe in, and have likewise shown a determination to destroy everything we are and believe in?
Why did Boehner and McConnell put the weak people they chose on the panel? Why has no Republican or conservative in government raised the roof over this extreme, incompetent partisan’s appointment to the commission?
The closest thing to even criticism these twerps have even received was from Newt Gingrich during the debate last night, and that was for political points.
There’s a scene from “Battle of the Bulge”, it’s one of the most touching scenes in the movie for me. A shattered tank commander, Telley Savalas, comes in, and in a plaintive voice begs, “…when are they gonna let us fight?”
Every. Single. (censored). Day. That scene goes through my mind. When are they gonna
let usfight?She’d almost certainly do a better job if she were…
O/T warning!
A government revision of Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel
I’m certain this is how schools would tell this timeless classic today.
equivalent of Charlie Rangler on ethics committee..
Gad…. getting tired of Patty’s pathetic puss.
After they get the boot! They haven’t been scared enough. Remember, this is the party that waits its turn and is very good a doing more to lose than to win. This is the party that gets close to winning, panics and tosses the election to the other side. We have to get rid of them as well as all the commie dems by focusing on one election after another.
Let’s not forget that Patty Murray lavished praise on Osama Ben Laden. It was only a few years ago that Murray actually asserted that while American and British forces were bombing Afghanistan and making a mess of things, according to Murray, Osama Ben Laden was building roads and schools. Ben Laden never built one real road in Afghanistan and Murray could not go to google maps and show even one dirt road that Osama Ben Laden had constructed in Afghanistan. Nor could Murray point out any of the wonderful schools she said Ben Laden had built. Where are the teachers to the Ben Laden schools? Well, Murray could not identify any of the teachers who taught in the Ben Laden primary schools. Where are the school buildings? In what province? In what town? Well, Murray could not identify the school teachers and or the school houses. None of this prevented Murray from pontificating about the superiority of Ben Laden to Bush and Blair. But since Murray cries “sexism” to any and all criticisms of her, the MSM took a nose dive. Murray should have been bounced out of office for her PR work for Ben Laden. And he didn’t even need to pay her.