CARLTON FLETCHER: Fleecing of American taxpayers continues

Don’t want to be an American idiot.

— Green Day

It’s kind of funny — and not funny ha-ha or even funny ironic … more funny sad — how politicians are crawling all over themselves to either defend or condemn the president’s budget proposal, released last week.

See, the way partisan politics works is you can’t take a look at this amazingly complex proposal and say, “You know, I think that’s a good idea, but this one might need a little tweaking” or “I’m not crazy about this part here, but I bet if I put my ideas out there we could work on a compromise that might work better.”

No, it’s either a Democratic “This spending plan is going to bankrupt the country and throw us into a state of chaos” or a Republican “This plan is exactly what the country needs to get itself back in order, to become great again, if you will.”

The truth is, both sides are so full of excrement they should be ashamed of themselves … if there were still such a thing as shame in Washington.

President Trump’s spending plan is flawed. But so was every other spending plan that was put forth by a U.S. president. That’s why it’s called a budget process. The president puts his plan out there, and the Senate and House work together — Ha! — to turn it into a workable spending plan.

But our elected officials would never think of working together to do what’s best for the people of this country. Instead you get the defense or condemnation mechanisms kicking in, when I would be willing to bet the whole defense budget that few, if any, of these blowhards have even read the document.

It’s like our district’s House representative, Democrat Sanford Bishop, after eight years of blindly praising the flawed budgets of Democratic President Obama, has offered the expected knee-jerk condemnation of Trump’s first budget. And our two U.S. Senators, Republicans Johnny Isakson and David Perdue, who so far have fallen directly in step with the new president like good little boys, have offered statements praising Trump’s budget after eight years of condemning Obama’s plans.

We all know it’s a joke, but it takes on a comical tone when Isakson and Perdue jump on the “this is just what our country needs” bandwagon when Trump’s plan cuts funding for programs the two have openly supported over the years.

What’s saddest of all is that, even those of us with only the most general knowledge of the workings of the federal government could come up with a budget that gets closer to fiscal responsibility, and not by doing away with defense spending or social programs.

It’s called eliminating the waste.

From March 1975 to December 1988, former Wisconsin Sen. William Proxmire gave out his “Golden Fleece Award” to government agencies fleecing the public through wasteful spending. Proxmire stirred up outrage when he revealed some of the projects tax dollars were being used to finance.

Among the winners over the years: The National Science Foundation, which spent $103,000 to compare the aggressiveness of sun fish who drink tequila to those who drink gin; the Office of Education for spending $220,000 to teach college students how to watch TV; the Department of Defense for spending $3,000 to determine if people in the military should carry umbrellas in the rain; the U.S. Department of Justice for conducting a study on why prisoners want to escape; President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration committee for spending $15.5 million on a second inauguration because cold weather marred the first one; and the National Institute of Mental Health for spending $97,000 on a study to determine what went on in a Peruvian brothel.

Taxpayers for Common Sense took up Proxmire’s passion after he left office, handing out fleece awards for such projects as the infamous Alaskan bridge to nowhere and to the FAA for wasting a half-billion dollars in taxpayer money on the Tampa International Airport.

Does anyone think that wasteful spending has lessened since the days of Proxmire? Or that these projects are anything less than the tip of the proverbial iceberg? (If you answered yes to those questions, you have a future as a politician. Just pick a side, pucker up and let your songs of praise begin.)

Because politicians have zeroed in on budget items that they know the “other side” has a keen interest in and not on specific wasteful spending that everyone keeps quiet about because they know they’re going to want to go on one of those “fact-finding tours” of a resort area (or a Peruvian brothel) sometime soon or they want to get some “research” dollars for their benefactors, the budget “discussion” — as always now — turns into politics as usual.

Naive of me, I know, but wouldn’t it be nice to have some of these useless politicians focus on the real waste in our government and quit using our tax dollars to fund their stupid partisan pillaging of our paychecks?

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_Fletcher on Twitter.