Sunday, November 26, 2006

Same Pork, New Flavor

Help me with something here, please. I'm afraid I just can't get my mind around it.

The Democrats ran in 2006 on, in part, the idea of "Republican corruption," right? And part of that meme was GOPers' supposed cushy releationships with lobbyists, right? And that led to a supposed tsunami of pork-barrel spending, right? And voters supposedly didn't like that and voted the Republicans out of majority control because of it, right?

So could somebody please explain this from the Donk most responsible for the Dems reconquest of the U.S. Senate?

Schumer said he'd focus on:

* Building the Second Avenue subway;

* Building a railway linking lower Manhattan to JFK Airport;

* Building a new tunnel under the Hudson River to connect Midtown with New Jersey.

* Changing Medicare and Medicaid formulas;

* Doling out homeland-security funds based on threat;

* Getting more federal money for education and affordable housing, and

* Increasing tax deductions for college tuition.

Aren't most of the items on that list a mass disembowelment of whole herds of hogs? And could voters have really, actually, truly forgotten that Republicans, whatever their fiscal sins over the past dozen years, were simply following the playbook the Democrats authored?

Or is budget-busting precisely what voters want, and they simply put in charge the party that will always have its heart fully in the blizzard of bread & circuses?