Funny clip but not the right one I think.

Also this really is just the kind of thing that makes you throw up your hands. Sure the Republicans are worse but everybody knows that, and reinstating paygo was pretty indefensibly stupid. I guess I'd still rather be a deficit hypocrite who helps unemployed people, but it was a completely unforced error.

Even dumber because the amount of money is so tiny, they couldn't scrounge up that money somewhere? I mean if Medicare Part D walked into a gas station and got handed the entire cost of this bill as change for his forty, it would go straight into the "take a penny, leave a penny" tray.

You are right, wrong clip. Fixing now.

If you're bored, consider this: Bunning was basically forced to retire during this legislative season by the same Republicans that he is now screwing. He's making them look like assholes (which they are). But I don't think he's only trying to shiv Democrats or unemployed people; I'd be willing to bet he knows what he's doing to Republicans on this.

Sam: you're right that the politics of this hurts Republicans as much as Democrats, but I'm not really talking about the politics, per se. The point I'm trying to make is this: Barack Obama made a HUGE point of instituting PayGo in his State of the Union. This was the Democrats ploy to fight back the Tea Party and everybody else getting upset about the deficit. Bunning is absolutely right to call the Democrats on their hypocrisy here. Either pass PayGo and then fucking pay as you go, or don't pass it. This kind of bullshit where PayGo will apply to everything except "emergencies" and then slapping the word "emergency" on everything is the kind of political horseshit that makes Washington look like a bunch of jerkoffs.

If you were one of the unemployed people whose benefits/COBRA insurance expired you might have a different opinion on whether it constituted an emergency.

Jesse,

I'm not disagreeing with anything you're saying. I'm just saying that what Bunning is doing might be more coldly calculating than he's letting on in regard to who he's trying to screw over. The answer seems to be: everybody.

Kevin: I find that response wholly uncompelling. I'm not saying we shouldn't extend the benefits. I'm not even saying we shouldn't use deficit spending to do it. But if we were going to be needing to do those things, than passing PayGo was retarded in the first place. Bypassing it by slapping "emergency" on things which, sorry unemployed people, simply do not rise to the level of national emergency, is political game-playing.

Jesse is wrong. This is an emergency. Not an emergency in the public health sense, but definitely an emergency in the PAYGO sense. An emergency is a situation that requires immediate and time-limited intervention to avert unintended negative consequences for a group at risk of economic disaster. The unemployed and the furloughed transportation workers certainly qualify. All that's in this bill is temporary funding. Yes, it increases the deficit, but it doesn't create a permanent entitlement (like Medicare Part D) or a permanent revenue reduction(like the Bush tax cuts in 2003).

Having PAYGO without an emergency exception is really stupid from a Keynesian perspective. This is actually the perfect bill (well, you could argue over the temporary Medicare fix part) to fit in an reasonable understanding of an emergency exception to PAYGO. Oh, and Bunning is a giant hypocrite because he was all over the extension of unemployement benefits in 2003 that wasn't PAYGO (and helped Bush).

In Bunning's defense, he threw a perfect game as a member of the Phillies. That takes superhuman talent.

An emergency is an unforeseeable situation that requires an out-of-the-ordinary response. When PayGo was passed within the last month, these economic problems, and the coming expiration of unemployment benefits, was not an unforeseeable situation. So while it may technically be true that the emergency clause in PayGo allows for this legislation to pass, Democrats knew about the "emergency" ahead of time, which maybe raises the level of their actions from hypocritical to intellectually dishonest.

Stop - everyone or my head will explode - If all these assholes in Washington would stop their damn games - Republicans and Democrats alike, than maybe this freaking emergency wouldn't exist and the unemployment benefits wouldn't have to be extended.

The politicians are all so busy trying to make each other look like total assholes, that they have forgotten the American Public - remember us - the shmucks that elected them