SHUT UP AND PAY

2/23/08

Today I heard Bob Brinker (the host of Money Talk, a syndicated radio talk show on money heard in Chicago on WLS on Saturdays and Sundays at 3:00 p.m.) express an opinion that deserves comment. I don’t mean to pick on Mr. Brinker alone because he is not the only “fiscal conservative” to voice such a glaringly inconsistent argument; he just happened to be the last person I have heard express it.

Mr. Brinker was in the middle of his usual lambasting of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton when he uttered the oft-heard contention that he didn’t know who was going to pay for all the promises these two have made. I want to clear up two things. First, as readers of the Pontificator know, I certainly have no problem with anyone blasting either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton, or any politician for that matter. There is plenty to criticize. Second, one of the ripest grounds for criticism of either Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton is on fiscal matters; I wholeheartedly agree that no one has any idea who is going to pay for the promises of these two purblind pols. Certainly, neither of these two poltroons has come forth with a credible method of paying for all of the promises that he or she has made.

However…

It’s curious that I never hear Mr. Brinker or any other self-styled “fiscal conservatives” say something like “I just don’t know how who is going to pay for Mr. McCain’s plan to continue, and possibly expand, the war in Iraq for generations.” Mr. McCain has never advanced a plan to pay for his military ambitions, but the Bob Brinkers and the other “fiscally conservative” types of the world never get around to pointing this out.

It would seem to this fiscal conservative that some consistency is demanded here. And maybe the faux fiscal conservatives do think they are consistent: They are protective of the public purse when it’s the Democrats who are spending our money. And, for these self-stlyed guardians of the public purse, that is good enough.