When pay Goes Does it Really go?

A senator from Florida placed a simple query to the chairperson of the Senate Finance Committee on 4th March Thursday – when pay goes does it really go? The Democrats replied with a resounding "No".



In one week it was the second time that the Republicans in the upper house exposed the untruth underlying Obama’s version of pay-go.

The president talks loudly about how he would take on the leadership by demanding the Congress to pay for all the new spending. Obama had said, "Now, Congress will have to pay for what it spends, just like everybody else." On other occasions he had said, "Now, in a perfect world, Congress would not have needed a law to act responsibly, to remember that every dollar spent would come from taxpayers today — or our children tomorrow…Like families across the country, we have to take responsibility for every dollar we spend. And with the return of ‘pay as you go,’ as well as other steps we’ve begun to take, that is exactly what we are doing… You have to make hard choices about where to spend and where to save."

It all sounded like a joke against the background of reality. The Republicans were naïve enough to take the words at its face value.

Everybody knows abut Jim Bunning (Republican/Kentucky) who attempted to make the Senate pay $10 billion – the amount it desired to pay for extension of unemployment benefits. He became publicly embarrassed with names being hurled at him. The national media humiliated him and he was depicted as the Grinch stealing Christmas. How could he dare to hint that the Democrats in the Senate keep their promises made three weeks ago? He should have understood that the President was just joking about paying for the spending.

Recently George LeMieux the new senator from the Sunshine State was more tactful in exposing the hypocrisy of the President but it was a stark exposure. He took up a point of order against a bill seeing to extend tax after discovering the chairperson of the Senate Finance was planning to stretch the programme list without having the Democrats pay for the same.

The plan of the Democrats was they would not have to pay for the welfare measures like stretching unemployment benefits, COBRA of FMAP that deal with state help towards medical costs. Le Mieux made his point clear that he would support the programmes but it should be under fiscal control.