Monday’s Morning Joe show on MSNBC  led off with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) responding to a question from Co-host Mika Brzezinski, expressing frustration as to why this fiscal cliff exists, and why doing something about it has come down to the last minute.

The short answer to her question is this.  The leadership (Obama, Reid, Biden) does not have the balls to be open or transparent about what they want, and don’t want, to do. Don’t you remember when Speaker Pelosi said, unequivocally, you’ll have to pass the health care bill to see what’s in it? That’s the way Obama rolls.

There is a 4 1/2 minute set-up to the segment with Sen. Coburn.


Transcript is below.

 Mika Brzezinski:You are paid to take care of this country’s wallet, to take care of this country’s reputation, to take care of this country’s health. Why wouldn’t you all just stay there and get it done. The whole thing. Not something little. Not something that ‘kicks the can down the road.’ You’ve used that phrase time and time again saying we can’t keep kicking the can down the road. I’m tired of hearing it. But even moreso our country needs some stability and balance and not temporary solutions. Why wouldn’t you all, who are paid to do this, stay there ’till you get it done?

Sen. Coburn: No one can argue with that. The problem is what you have to argue with is the fact that everything is done in a dark room, back room, not the committee, not on the floor. And the reason we haven’t achieved anything, is that the process that was intended to work for our country doesn’t work anymore because we won’t bring bills to the floor anymore.

We wouldn’t be where we are today if we actually had regular order in the Senate where you actually had bills come to the floor that actually went through committee, and amendments were offered and we took an up or down vote and then did something with them. We’ve not done that. And that’s because our leadership values the political more than they value the country. We put a premium on protecting members rather than exposing truth and letting the American people see the process.

… we have not done our job but the reason we’re not doing our job is because most members want to have it both ways. They don’t want to have the criticism of making a tough decision.

Here’s some stats that will blow your mind. It should answer the question to whether the ‘war on poverty’ is lost. Or, raise the question whether it was ever intended to be ‘won’ in the first place.

According to the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee, welfare spending per day per household in poverty is $168, which is higher than the $137 median income per day. When broken down per hour, welfare spending per hour per household in poverty is $30.60, which is higher than the $25.03 median income per hour.

The universe of means-tested welfare spending refers to programs that provide low-income assistance in the form of direct or indirect financial support—such as food stamps, free housing, child care, etc.—and which the recipient does not pay into (in contrast to Medicare or Social Security). For fiscal year 2011, CRS identified roughly 80 overlapping federal means-tested welfare programs that together represented the single largest budget item in 2011—more than the nation spends on Social Security, Medicare, or national defense. The total amount spent on these federal programs, when taken together with approximately $280 billion in state contributions, amounted to roughly $1 trillion. Nearly 95 percent of these costs come from four categories of spending: medical assistance, cash assistance, food assistance, and social / housing assistance. Under the President’s FY13 budget proposal, means-tested spending would increase an additional 30 percent over the next four years.

This so-called war is never-ending, with the purpose of creating as many voters dependent on government as possible. And look how successful it has become under the current Commander-in-Chief. Will Americans vote themselves a decrease in benefits after they’ve already voted for keeping them, and soaking the rich to ostensibly sustain them?

Link:‘Welfare Spending Equates to $168 Per Day for Every Household in Poverty’

The administration is having great success in their ad campaign to spread the wealth around.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been running radio ads for the past four months encouraging those eligible to enroll. The campaign is targeted at the elderly, working poor, the unemployed and Hispanics.

Hispanics here and in Mexico.

The most recent data on SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) participation were released Friday, and showed that 47,710,324 people were enrolled in the program in September, an increase of 607,559 from the 47,102,765 enrolled in August.

The increase is just as much a matter of policy as it is the poor economy. Obama’s poor economy. In The White House, they call it ‘street money.’ Well, they won’t really say that. But that’s what it is. Creating a dependent society, fundamental change in America, is moving right along.

It’s not as though our journey to the so-called fiscal cliff was a surprise or accident. This journey was planned, voted and approved by a congress that can’t say NO. And it didn’t start with the Obama administration. It started with the Johnson administration fifty years ago by raiding Social Security to fund new so-called entitlement programs he called The Great Society. It was that short-sightedness and the continued expansion of government overhead since then that has brought us to where we are today.

The fix is simple. Any head of household knows what it is. You don’t spend more than you have. You budget what you do have to last until your next paycheck, or in this case, the next April 15th. Like the game of golf the concept is simple. Hit the ball into the hole. The hard part is gaining the skill to do it.

The administration today champions higher taxes. They like the tax rates under the Clinton administration. They conveniently forget the part where Clinton’s spending didn’t exceed the revenue and how that came to be.

Again, the fix is simple but it requires decisions that are not politically easy to make. Make and pass a budget, something the Obama administration has so-far neglected to do. And make it a revenue-priority budget, not a spending-priority budget. To support a sustainable economy and society, it means when your money runs out on paper, you’ve spent enough. As opposed to borrowing to keep up with your spending and entitlement programs. Or to put it another way, making promises you can’t keep.

Above all else, you don’t grow government. What the politicos in Washington fail to understand is that growing government is increasing our (taxpayers’) overhead. And when you’re going out of business, you don’t increase your overhead. Any politician that suggests anything to the contrary is pushing snake oil.

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