Old Mother Pelosi, livin’ the cliché

“The cupboard is bare!” announces the distinguished minority leader, embarrassing all of us who at some time or other used to call ourselves “Democrats.” This whole sequestration thing is bad, says Rep. Nancy Pelosi, because there is, you know, in the whole federal budget nothing left to cut! Nothing! No more fat! It’s all muscle and bone! “There’s no more cuts to make.”

You can certainly argue—and many people have—that we shouldn’t be making cuts in government spending, because unemployment is still high—particularly when you consider the invisible unemployed—the people who have given up looking for work. But to say that there are no more cuts to make is ridiculous. The National Review sportingly runs an article by Henry Olsen, pointing out that the federal government spends $8 billion a year on government-subsidized crop insurance—welfare for the rich. Does Pelosi defend this?

The problem is, she does, though not in so many words. Pelosi still lives, or wants to live, in the good old days, when everyone voted for everyone else’s program, and everyone was happy. She doesn’t want to admit that any government program is wasteful, because once the cutting starts, well, who know where it will end. We might even end up looking at federal spending rationally. And for Nancy Pelosi, and a lot of other people, that’s pretty damn scary.