Political and intellectual bankruptcy

Rich Lowry, excerpts: Spent:

Rahm Emanuel wants to allow federal agencies to redirect half of any unnecessary, unspent money in their budgets to other initiatives and half to deficit reduction. Currently, agencies must return all money they don’t spend, giving them an incentive to spend it all.

“The president’s goal has been to change Washington’s focus from figuring out how to spend money to how to save money,” Emanuel explained to the Journal, a statement that suggests he has taken leave of the reality-based community. Perhaps he has been too busy managing the hectic trade in White House job offers to notice the administration has added $2.4 trillion in debt in 500 days. . .

The House recently considered another $200 billion “jobs bill. . .

Late in the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt’s Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, told Congress, “We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.” Democrats have made Morgenthau’s plaint their governing ethic. In so doing, they are demonstrating their political and intellectual bankruptcy even faster than they are bankrupting the country.