Dan Calabrese

How do you stop people from spending money when they have unlimited authority to do so, and will never suffer a consequence for exercising it?

Not only that, but why would you bother to try when you will be painted as the villain for doing so?

Perfectly Ladewigian.

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Kentucky) made his point earlier this week by holding up a $10 billion extension of federal unemployment benefits as long as he could. But that was all he could do. With Democrats chomping at the bit to spend the money and even Republicans nervous as hell about being painted as heartless, Bunning couldn’t keep up his one-man filibuster forever.

When it comes to spending in Washington, no one ever can.

Although certain individuals are serious about real spending discipline – like Jim DeMint, Tom Coburn and Bunning in the Senate; and Paul Ryan, Jeb Hensarling and Mike Pence in the House – neither Congress nor the Administration as institutions are the slightest bit interested in real reform.

This is why a proposal like that from Pence and Hensarling, to limit federal spending by law to 20 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, can never go anywhere. By contrast, when the president of the United States offers a budget that he labels in his own footnote as unsustainable, but submits it nonetheless with the promise to appoint a commission to study the issue, this is treated as a serious act of governance.

Most members of Congress are convinced that, at any given moment, it is more in their own personal interests to spend than it is to save or cut. It’s fine to talk about cutting spending, which is why Obama periodically repeats his blather about “going through the budget line by line,” but it is never in your interest to actually do so.

That’s why you get proposals to send all Social Security recipients an extra $250. Hey, why not? You have the authority. Might as well do it. That’s why, whenever unemployment benefits reach their limit, you simply extend them. You can. Why wouldn’t you?

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That’s why Obama is able to pretend that six years of spending is really 10 years of spending, and journalists like Ezra Klein of the Washington Post become so perplexed when someone points out that this is smoke and mirrors.

This is why Nancy Pelosi can announce the implementation of “pay as you go” budgeting, and a year later Obama can say the exact same thing, and everyone knows from the get-go that they don’t mean it – because there is always the exception of stuff that’s really important, which oh, by the way, is everything – and no one even finds it remarkable that they don’t mean it.

All Bunning was trying to do by holding up this $10 billion allocation was to take Obama and Pelosi at their word with respect to their statements about spending discipline, which I suspect Bunning knew from the outset was absurd.

For his trouble, of course, Bunning is pilloried as some sort of fiery-eyed demon who hates the unemployed. Because that’s how it works, isn’t it? Someone wants something . . . Congress gives it to them. It makes no difference if there is any money for it. Just give it to them. You’re a cad if you don’t.

These same people probably don’t raise their own children like this, but then their children don’t have the ability to vote them out of the house, or maybe they would.

We’re getting perilously close to a national fiscal disaster that will rip the economic foundations of this country, and most of these clowns now serving in Congress probably realize that. But they seem to figure it won’t come soon enough for it to be their problem, so what the hell?

My dad used to work with a guy named Bob Ladewig, who developed a theory called Ladewigian Economics. He applied this theory the day he showed up for work in his new Cadillac, which surprised colleagues who were pretty sure Bob didn’t make enough money to be able to afford the Caddy.

Bob confirmed this.

“I went to buy a Chevy,” he explained. “But I couldn’t afford the Chevy. So I figured, if I can’t afford a Chevy, I might as well not afford a Cadillac.”

Bob’s theory is now the official policy of the United States government.

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