Over-worked Congress works on priorities

Congress is having a rough go of it working on their exit plan for the 2005 session. Usually they'd be off doing whatever they do when they aren't "in-session", but this year they have a busy agenda.

Check out this bill, "freezing or cutting back spending on medical research and education and nearing agreement on cuts to the Medicaid health care program for the poor." Now it happens that Lanky is supported by medical research spending, but really I don't care. The budget should be balanced. It should be balanced with both cuts and tax increases. However, we should also have a little transparency here. Our biggest elective expenditure is the war in Iraq, which since 2003 has cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

So, because we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars in war, we cut back on research to cure disease. If that's cool with you, it's cool with me. Money is finite and it's up to our elected officials to determine how it is spent.

I'm just tired of people pretending we can wage war forever on a credit card without any opportunity costs. How many petri dishes you can get for a cruise missle? I wonder if my congressman even knows. Bet it never crossed his mind when he voted for war.

Well, I'm sure the war will be worth the hundreds of billions of dollars once the Iraqis are free and thankful to us. They will be thankful won't they? It will have been a worthy expenditure of a few hundred billion. Don't we still appreciate what the French did for us?

(oh i forgot to address the Medicaid cuts. Advice to the poor: join the Army, it's got better benefits and job security than education.)