Thursday, March 20, 2008

The Republcans Win in the Arena of Ideas...and words

Today, the Republicans won. As the bloated budgets were trudging through the House, we wanted to send one message, strong and clear: Government is wasting the taxpayers money and it is time that waste (and mismanagement and abuse) is exposed. We demanded, and briefly achieved Transparency...Sunshine on government spending.

As the sun was literally streaming through the windows on the Democrat's side of the House, we introduced transparency amendments to the spending bills. The Democratic leaders fought valiantly to hold their members in with passionate speeches about how this was unnecessary, expensive and really just nothing more than "grandstanding". But the arguments by those on the left side of the aisle, the ones with the most waste and mismanagement to hide, fell out of their mouths, rolled off their lecterns and landed silently on the floor. The Transparency Amendment passed with a veto-proof majority of 74 members!

So, in a prodigious panoply of procedural pusillanimity, the Dems resorted to the same tactic that a six year-old resorts to when he knows he has been beaten. They figuratively covered their ears and yelled "We can't hear you!" They abandoned the bill with the Transparency amendment attached to it and quickly substituted it with a new bill (exactly like the old one, except with no amendments attached) and then pushed it through allowing NO floor debate.

And thus followed the remaining spending bills, measures which were far above available revenues, and they all passed. But we conservative spenders who wish for the bright sunshine to flood through the windows of state government will not be discouraged or deterred. We are winning this fight for the taxpayers of Michigan!

By the way, I found it rather ironic that as we were arguing for more transparency, the Dems on the sunny side of the room closed the shutters, blocking out the sunshine.


No comments: