A Boston Tea Party …(Only Flies Left)

I don’t take pleasure on raining on people’s parades but it is something I do very well. It was brought to my attention through Scott’s blog (Time Mag Swoons Over Senator Conrad) that our esteemed Senator was named one of the America’s ten best. It took me two days to stop laughing and get my thoughts together. My initial thought was it must be a great honor to make the top ten from such an admired list of candidates (insert EXTREME sarcasm).

“Time” magazine says no one knows the federal budget like good ol’ Kent. Well, it just so happens budgets are my business as well. What is strange though is the budgets I work on have both income and expenses. When listening to Mr. Budget wizard it would seem the federal budget consists solely of the income side. The wizard constantly laments over our budget deficits and reminds everyone of the train wreck we are on because of Republican tax cuts. I will agree with the “Wiz” that budgets are so much easier when the income side is unlimited. Most of us budget types don’t get to work in that fantasy world, however.

The expense side of a budget is where the hard work takes place. It is not easy to cut costs but it is very much necessary. Conrad could not … will not name fifty programs in the federal system that are not needed. He can’t even name ten. Hell, I haven’t heard Conrad ever name a single federal program that is worth doing without. When it came to Social Security reform the “Wizard of budget land” offered no solutions other than to stick his head in the sand.

Naming Kent Conrad as one of the top ten Senator’s in America tells us how really sad the current body of Senators really is. Conrad calls himself a deficit hawk. He is a hawk that only flies left. He has spent so many years there; he is nothing more than a partisan just like all the rest. His uses of charts make pretty pictures but they lack intellectual honesty. The only top ten list he should have made was the one for the amount of smoke blown up people’s asses.