Lexington Herald Leader Editorial Decries "[Senator Jim] Bunning's Callous Grandstanding", Sees "[Trey] Grayson, [Rand] Paul Wrong To Applaud".
Bunning's callous grandstanding
Grayson, Paul wrong to applaud
As long as Republicans were in charge, Sen. Jim Bunning was OK with trading a surplus for a deficit. He voted to put two wars, tax cuts and a Medicare drug benefit on the nation's credit card.
Now that Republicans are no longer in charge, Bunning is drawing the line on deficit spending. He's doing it in a way that shows callous contempt for the more than one in 10 working Kentuckians whose jobs disappeared in the economic meltdown.
We've become accustomed to bizarre, egocentric behavior from Bunning. So it wasn't all that surprising when he single-handedly blocked an unemployment benefits extension for a million people, including 119,230 in Kentucky, whose benefits run out this year. About 14,000 Kentuckians will exhaust their benefits in two weeks without the extension.
Bunning's filibuster also denies newly laid-off workers help paying for health insurance. It halts road and bridge projects around the country by furloughing 2,000 federal transportation employees, stops reimbursements to state highway programs and cuts Medicare payments to doctors.
To those who know him, it's not surprising that Bunning answered a Democratic colleague's complaint with a crude profanity. Or that he joked about missing a basketball game while pushing some unemployed Kentuckians into homelessness or bankruptcy.
What is surprising is that Trey Grayson and Rand Paul, the leading Republicans to succeed Bunning, jumped on his one-man band wagon.
Both of them applauded Bunning's actions. Paul's campaign even announced that it will hold a rally supporting Bunning's blockade of aid to the unemployed.
Maybe Grayson and Paul think this plays well with the conservatives who vote in Republican primaries, though Republicans also lose jobs in a bad economy.
It doesn't say much for Grayson's and Paul's judgment, however. Voters could justifiably conclude that they too would be prone to ideological grandstanding, something of which Washington already has far too much.
Also, it's bad economic policy to end unemployment benefits when joblessness is this high. The loss of benefits churns through the economy and hurts other businesses that provide jobs.
Congress has reinstated the pay-as-you-go rules that produced a balanced budget in the Clinton years and must, as Bunning says, follow those rules to gain control of a runaway deficit. Unemployment benefits are a ridiculous place to start. Do Grayson and Paul really not understand that?
Grayson, Paul wrong to applaud
As long as Republicans were in charge, Sen. Jim Bunning was OK with trading a surplus for a deficit. He voted to put two wars, tax cuts and a Medicare drug benefit on the nation's credit card.
Now that Republicans are no longer in charge, Bunning is drawing the line on deficit spending. He's doing it in a way that shows callous contempt for the more than one in 10 working Kentuckians whose jobs disappeared in the economic meltdown.
We've become accustomed to bizarre, egocentric behavior from Bunning. So it wasn't all that surprising when he single-handedly blocked an unemployment benefits extension for a million people, including 119,230 in Kentucky, whose benefits run out this year. About 14,000 Kentuckians will exhaust their benefits in two weeks without the extension.
Bunning's filibuster also denies newly laid-off workers help paying for health insurance. It halts road and bridge projects around the country by furloughing 2,000 federal transportation employees, stops reimbursements to state highway programs and cuts Medicare payments to doctors.
To those who know him, it's not surprising that Bunning answered a Democratic colleague's complaint with a crude profanity. Or that he joked about missing a basketball game while pushing some unemployed Kentuckians into homelessness or bankruptcy.
What is surprising is that Trey Grayson and Rand Paul, the leading Republicans to succeed Bunning, jumped on his one-man band wagon.
Both of them applauded Bunning's actions. Paul's campaign even announced that it will hold a rally supporting Bunning's blockade of aid to the unemployed.
Maybe Grayson and Paul think this plays well with the conservatives who vote in Republican primaries, though Republicans also lose jobs in a bad economy.
It doesn't say much for Grayson's and Paul's judgment, however. Voters could justifiably conclude that they too would be prone to ideological grandstanding, something of which Washington already has far too much.
Also, it's bad economic policy to end unemployment benefits when joblessness is this high. The loss of benefits churns through the economy and hurts other businesses that provide jobs.
Congress has reinstated the pay-as-you-go rules that produced a balanced budget in the Clinton years and must, as Bunning says, follow those rules to gain control of a runaway deficit. Unemployment benefits are a ridiculous place to start. Do Grayson and Paul really not understand that?
Labels: News reporting
posted by KYJurisDoctor at 12:12 PM
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