Tripefan*
Uh-oh. Him again.
E. Erick Erickson,1 RedState:
A Tale of Budget Cowardice…and Courage
The summer after 5th grade, we got that book out from the library. We read it excitedly through our horn-rimmed Dexter glasses while listening nonstop to Perry Como’s Como Comes Alive.
So the Democrats have…
This is going to be something that reflects poorly on them, we can just tell.
So the Democrats have finally admitted they will not produce a budget plan this year. This is the ultimate in political cowardice. To understand how cowardly, one must understand what a budget plan really is.
A plan. A plan for a budget? This is when you plan to make a budget, or is a plan that is made on a budget. That’s infinity cowardly.
Well, glad we cleared that up. The penultimate in political cowardice is probably triple or dipple infinity.
In short, a budget is an outline, a roadmap, a guide for future spending and revenues. It does not actually spend anything or take any money in itself. It’s just a blueprint.
So in long, it’s just a budget plan. But in short, it’s a blueprint plus hummana-hummana-hummana-wordity-yakkity-bla.
One thing is for certain. Here we find the true and factual statement that when you make a budget, it does not go straight out the door and get in your car and start the engine, then release the parking brake and put the car in drive, driving thus to and fro, stopping hither and thither, flouncing and pouncing both higgledy and piggledy, over dale no less than hill — to spend or take all your money in itself, or any other elf, let alone all its ilk. That’s what a budget doesn’t do.
Dude, I just frickin’ asked you to let those ilk alone.
Aah, well, that joke worked in theory. Back to Erick:
Think of how you do your family budget. You may budget to spend $100 a week on food, $40 a week on gas, and $20 a week on entertainment. Big categories.
As opposed to trifles like shelter and medical care.
You don’t have to budget for Cheerios versus eggs, or regular versus super unleaded, or movie night versus mini-golf. Those detailed decisions come later, as you go along in life.
We’ve just found out why Erick’s soufflés don’t always come off well, his car runs lousy, and he can only get a few minutes into Braveheart each time before being asked to pick up his recliner and ottoman and move out of the way of the #7-hole putt-putt prairie dog jamboree.
But the family budget sets the parameters for big categories of future spending.
The ultimate parameters are one of the most unique, um, criterion of phenomena.
No, seriously. You budget big categories like food, but detailed decisions like Cheerios versus eggs comes later in life — and this is what sets the parameters for big categories of future spending?
A hot wind blows your hat off, and the Speedball Express comes roaring past on the Chattahoochee-to-Wichita run, snagging a canvas mailbag as it whooshes into the live-rock tunnel under the foothills of Old Baldy. Inside that mailbag was my brain.
The same is true for a budget resolution in Washington. It sets the parameters for big categories of spending—say, “transportation” or “international affairs.” The details of which dollars go where come later in the appropriations bills, tax bills, or direct spending bills.
In other words, a budget resolution is the most basic fiscal legislation that Washington can produce. And get this: it’s not even binding! A budget resolution does not go to the President for signature and thus does not have the force of law.
As Wikipedia explains: “A budget resolution, which is one form of a concurrent resolution, binds Congress, but is not a law, and so does not require the President’s signature.” Huh. So Erick can hike stuff, and all he has to do is change the wording and make facts wrong? Sweet.
And then what’s this?
The budget resolution serves as a blueprint for the actual…
A blueprint, yes. Welp, let’s take the cap off this 1.5-liter bottle of cheap gin. [dook-dook-dook-dook] Ahhh, shmooth. [sound of body falling to floor]
So let’s recap: the Democrats have just admitted that they are not able to pass the most basic, almost simplistic fiscal outline that’s not even binding anyway.
Re-uncap tha damn bottle, ya big red [hic!] galoot…
* Began as a pun on ‘budget,’ wandered, lost narrative.
1 Wants a picture of that outlaw menace Spider Man for the evening edition.
With all the bad things Irk has been doin’ to yer branes, I think you’d be well-advised to keep them away from him. I mean, even zrm would only EAT them.
I had tripe once….. once.
Fucking budgets, how do they work?
Hey, I’m easily this stupid! Well, I could be, if I hit myself repeatedly in the forehead with a ball-peen hammer. Why can’t *I* work for CNN?
Why can’t *I* work for CNN?
I think that “I just lurves me some corporate cock” needs to be right up front there on your resume. That and all the best journalists bring their own knee pads. If this sounds like heaven for you then you’re ready for CNN.
Amount of effort spent on budget = direct correllation with most horrible cowardess?
Where was e of e on April fools 2009?
http://washingtonindependent.com/35914/behold-charts
Wingnuts are the Birdemic of the political universe. Just point and laugh.
to spend or take all your money in itself, or any other elf
Shirley you mean “your pelf in itself”.
That is all.
I prefer and practice the glug, glug, glug sound when guzzling cheap gin.
Blueprint. Blueprint. BLUEPRINT.
Well, there’s the problem. We needs us a redprint.
I believe that this is the first time that a post by Gavin M. has made sense to me. The drugs must finally be working.
Wait a minute!
They told me in high school that “budget” was a six-letter word for “European blackbird”!
Maybe that’s why I’m living in a refrigerator box under the Antelope Valley Freeway!
(But maybe I can finish the crossword puzzle i’ve been working on for twenty years now that I know where I went wrong!)
Anybody know a six-letter word for “European blackbird”?
(Aside from “budget.”)
Hey, my mom had a recipe for cheerio soufflé!
Praise be to FSM for our emergence from the American culinary dark ages, but it’s tragic that our politics haven’t kept pace.
The drugs must finally be working.
Yours or his?
Actually, its not that important as long as the rest of us can share.
Erickson:
Article:
Is this why CNN hired him? To bring their intelligence down to Sean Hannity levels? It’s certainly not about conservatism v liberalism…
They told me in high school that “budget” was a six-letter word for “European blackbird
Well, an African blackbird, may-be.
I hate it when quotes get truncated by the pajama gnomes. Sleepytime with Courage!
I thought the deficit comission was getting scrapped? As much as the world is dying to see Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles* find excuses for why poor people need to get the shaft, I think I’ll survive.
*(I had erskine bowels once. The cramping was terrible.)
Erick the Ejumicator explains for his moron hordes how important a budget is for fiscal responsibility — why think of your family budget! And what lack of courage to not even have one! Here’s a little fact he conveniently omits– but which can be found in his linked Hill article right after the sentence he lifted about the House annual budget resolution and 1974*: The House and Senate together, when controlled by Republicans in the past 12 years, failed to pass a final budget resolution in 1998, 2004 and 2006. The first time in twelve years that a final budget resolution was passed by Congress was in 2008, when all those courageous Republicans no longer controlled both houses.
Republican Paul Ryan has already put forth a Republican budget plan, but it’s odd that those courageous Goopers don’t want to even talk about it.
*I doubt if Erickson wants to talk about why these rules needed to be legislated in 1974 under Nixon either.
Erick forgot his most important budget category- how much does he put aside for Cheetos?
Aw dammit. I was going to make a joke that Erik can’t spell Cheetos.
Somehow I doubt it’s been many a day since Erik bin Erik has had meaningful contact with Cheerios.
So, he’s substantially misleading, factually incorrect, and not an entertaining writer. He says incredibly stupid things pretty much all the time, he doesn’t have a sonorous Corey Flintoff or even Brian Williams voice, and he looks like an extra from King of Queens, so can someone explain to me why the hell he is on TV?
Budget hearings have been delayed by the mountain of Rock Salt that Eldritch’s readers sent to Olympia Snowe. The price of eternal vigilance, E me old used condom, is mounds of rock salt buggering up the budget.