From the Washington Times via Drudge:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an “ongoing victory,” and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.

[…]

Asked if that meant the government was running at peak efficiency, Mr. DeLay said, “Yes, after 11 years of Republican majority we’ve pared it down pretty good.”

This is probably the most ridiculous thing I’ve read in the past month, Katrina spin and counter-spin included. The federal government is running at peak efficiency? What bizarro universe is DeLay living in? From the same article:

“This is hardly a well-oiled machine,” said Rep. Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican. “There’s a lot of fat to trim. … I wonder if we’ve been serving in the same Congress.”

American Conservative Union Chairman David A. Keene said federal spending already was “spiraling out of control” before Katrina, and conservatives are “increasingly losing faith in the president and the Republican leadership in Congress.”

“Excluding military and homeland security, American taxpayers have witnessed the largest spending increase under any preceding president and Congress since the Great Depression,” he said.

Mr. Keene said annual nonmilitary and non-homeland security spending increased $303 billion between fiscal year 2001 and 2005; the acknowledged federal debt increased more than $2 trillion since fiscal year 2000; and the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill is estimated to increase the government’s unfunded obligations by $16 trillion.

This sort of bullshitting from a public official only lends further creedence to a recent article by the Weekly Standard’s Andrew Ferguson in which he castigated conservative bureaucrats who “came to Washington to do good and stayed to do well.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 14th, 2005 at 12:17 by Ian and is filed under National. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.