What are They, Six?

[forsyth]

"The bureaucratic brainstorm was straightforward -- simple-minded is, perhaps, a more appropriate description -- don't pay doctors, hospitals and their army of auxiliaries tending to indisposed old folks and the afflicted disabled for their labors in the last nine days of the current fiscal year. Instead, send them a check for what you owe them, sometime after the first of October, the start of the government's fiscal '07. In essence, those doctors, hospitals et al. are making an involuntary loan of nine days' pay without interest.

That way, point out the gleeful budgeteers and Medicare pooh-bahs, all of whom presumably are glowing with health, Uncle Sam's Medicare tab this fading fiscal year will be $5.2 billion less than it otherwise would have been. Or at least would seem to be $5.2 billion less -- in Washington, as we all know, appearance and reality are not invariably the same phenomena."

Via The Big Picture, originally from Barron's.

Thank YOU, "fiscal conservativism"!

Comments

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Fiscal conservatism is the belief that we shouldn't be spending a ton of money. It's actually useful to have fiscal conservatives around to keep spending from getting out of control.

However, supply-side "economics" took over the Republican party in the '80s and the true fiscal conservatives have been basically purged from the party—they only go through the motions these days to keep up appearances. The last fiscal conservative of any prominence was Bob Dole, and even he bought into the supply-side snake oil before he ran for President.

[victor-von.livejournal.com]

That's kind of what I was going for. The actions described above, and the label of fiscal conservative, are both seperate lies. Especially these days-- "tax and spend" isn't much of a philosophy, but it's a lot better than "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter" and "spend what you don't have."