By Charlie Meyer:

“Foul ball!”

If there was a Penalty Box in baseball, as there is in hockey, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) would have been in it. A bench with his name on it.

The crass “Tough @#$%!” Bunning retort as he was quoted as allegedly saying when he blocked extending COBRA subsidies and other federal unemployment benefits to the nation’s teeming masses of the out-of-work probably won’t make it into the annals of winning political strategy. At least Marie Antoinette was a bit more careful of her words: “Let them eat cake.” Marie did get that terminal trim at her neckline on the guillotine anyway. Jim just gets another fat pension when he leaves the Capitol. Stopping the temporary extension of Medicare reimbursement rates for seniors apparently didn’t concern ole Jim either, but he made his pile already and will have lifetime health care to boot. Some new Senator from the Bluegrass State will gain perks such as not waiting for a table at the Capitol Grille, The Palm, or some other tony steakhouse in the District of Columbia.

I guess Bunning had “nothing to lose”, as he wasn’t running for reelection anyway. He’s right up there with the late Leona Helmsley, “The Queen of Mean.”

To be fair, which often has little to do with politics, the Senator from Kentucky was making a point of objecting to continuing a program without having a way to pay for it. I can see his point, even if Republicans were merrily running up our national debt in Iraq and Afghanistan at breakneck speed during the last decade, while giving fat tax cuts to those in the highest tax brackets. The repressive autocrats in Peking are holding a lot of our markers. “What’s good for the goose, is good for the gander” comes to mind, and we’re not talking about foie gras. As they say in boxing, “timing” is everything. Bunning would have never been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, had his timing in that sport matched his political timing.

Well, Senator Bunning’s filibuster was short lived, and had none of the underdog drama of Jimmy Stewart in Frank Capra’s “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington.” His contemporaries didn’t have to pray that their physician would still see them. The long-term unemployed didn’t have to limit their grocery shopping to the cat food aisle, at least not for another thirty days. Yanking extended unemployment benefits to American families who desperately need this lifeline as a political stunt has all the chutzpah of honoring Saddam Hussein on his statesmanship, or Dr. Kevorkian on his patient morbidity record.

Full disclosure: As readers who read my commentary in yesterday’s edition learned, I have been unemployed, other than writing this column, for two weeks now. Millions are far worse off. For those who still have jobs, look at the West Virginia Unemployment Insurance compensation table, as I did earlier this week. It keeps one who involuntarily lost his or her job due to lack of business going while we look for other work, at a miserly level. It’s certainly not what I would want to subsist on for more than a short time, much less on an extended basis. It’s not supposed to. All said, I’m glad it’s there. Other than writing and ten-thumbed amateur home improvement, being out of work is boring, and not just a little worrysome. Something eventually comes up, though, and not a moment too soon. I shudder thinking of those who have it harder. Families with kids, for example. Meanwhile, I’m still looking for a water and smoke damaged Social Security card in a pl! astic bag somewhere here in order to join the other unemployed whose benefits haven’t run out in some office somewhere in the Chicken Capital of West Virginia.

>From my personal experience in the hospitality industry on Capitol Hill, Senators are human; they all pretty much put their pants or panty hose on the same way as the rest of us.   Sometimes we all say or do things we wish we hadn’t. As a wiseguy, I know I’ve had the self-inflicted taste of size 10 shoe leather on my palate on far too many occasions. Bunning’s gaffe will follow him long after he leaves the Senate; at least mine were forgiven, forgotten, or at least some of the names of the women who were the audiences for my faux pas have been forgotten. Senators do not have halos, but we should expect a bit of statesmanship befitting their station. Bunning struck out on that score.

OK, nobody starved when Bunning decided to pull his mindless political stunt. Nobody is calling for his head as literally as they did for Ms. Antoinette’s noggin in Paris two centuries ago. Two unfunded wars by Republicans combined with unprecedented tax cuts for the rich certainly do not make them the champions of fiscal prudence, either. Yes, there’s a war (or two) on, but in far darker times several decades ago, Americans of that day sacrificed, survived, and later thrived again as a nation, without neglecting the other priorities of a people. I also don’t seem to recall reading of Franklin D. Roosevelt calling for tax cuts for the wealthy. FDR wasn’t a Republican.

Even Bunning’s supporters think he’s a crusty old coot. He’s on his way out to that Kentucky pasture, well fertilized with our greenbacks. Perhaps Mrs. Bunning should talk to my neighbor to find in which primitives shop she found the “My husband just retired. Rescue me!” sign. I think she’ll need it. As for the rest of us: Senator Bunning, good riddance.

By Stephen Smoot:

 In 1868, a few short months before the voters chose another chief executive, the United States Senate decided whether or not to remove Andrew Johnson from the presidency. Historians do not like Johnson, but most agree that his main crimes lay in stubbornness, abrasiveness, and possibly erratic drunkenness. Republicans in the House of Representatives passed articles of impeachment to public acclaim. Peter van Winkle of West Virginia, among other Republicans, was not so sure. He saw the removal of a president for anything short of serious crimes as setting a dangerous precedent. Van Winkle and his colleagues broke ranks and voted against removal, not out of support for Johnson but out of principle. Politically speaking they fell on their swords, but like Winston Churchill arguing alone in the 1930s for British disarmament, they had the knowledge that they fought for the right principle.

On the surface, Jim Bunning sounds more like the stubborn Johnson than the principled Van Winkle. He antagonized many in his days as a Phillies all-star pitcher and has taken the same tack while representing his state in Congress. Bunning is not even on speaking terms with fellow Kentucky Senator and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. In the past week Bunning, who announced his retirement, embarked on a one man crusade to halt the growth of spending. He used procedural rules to hold up passage of unemployment extensions to force offsetting budget cuts elsewhere.

Democrats screamed that Bunning was acting in a typically Republican fashion by abusing the poor in the name of budget cuts. Republicans in Congress generally expressed their discomfort while Tea Partiers across the country rallied behind him. Bunning’s tactic may work as leaders scramble to find ways to compromise before funding runs out. CNN and MSNBC offered their typically superficial coverage, leaving it to Fox News to find one of the real reasons for Bunning’s obstinance. He definitely has a commitment to shrinking the debt, but his statements come peppered with contempt for Senator McConnell. Is this a personal grudge or a principled battle?

Generally speaking Bunning picked the right issue, but the wrong battlefield. The unemployed are currently not proposing policies to regulate manufacturing into the dustbin of history while taxing everything else into oblivion, scaring companies off of capital investment and hiring.   Targeting their benefits is counterproductive. Liberal Democrats claim they want to preserve and expand manufacturing jobs, but cannot stand to sacrifice even a single bush, salamander, or trickle of running water to achieve it. Obama and his Democratic friends in Congress expanded both unemployment and the debt to the dismay of working people and taxpayers everywhere. Most Americans agree with Jim Bunning on one point. Our debt needs to shrink with reduced spending as opposed to higher taxes. Let’s think bigger than penny-ante offsets and try to slice away large chunks of expenditure.

First, let’s go after the Department of Education. In 1979 its budget was $14.5 billion. Within twenty years that sum more than doubled. What does it cost taxpayers today? I wish I knew. I researched the White House budget and other government sources and got a nice list of discretionary spending on certain programs but found no sum total. This department is completely unnecessary and ought to be abolished. When created, liberal Democratic senator Pat Schroeder of Colorado feared that the department would impose its will on local and state authorities. That pretty much has happened. Most mandates come with powerful strings that coerce state policies and violate the Tenth Amendment. We should eliminate this boondoggle entirely. Move student loan oversight to Treasury and privatize the process. Take a third of Education’s current budget and hand it out in block grants for public schools and higher education. Public school aid must go directly to classroom exp! enditures, not bureaucrats with their hands out. Take what is left and send it straight to debt payment.

What else goes on the chopping block? Energy and Veterans Affairs. Part of the Energy Department regulates military uses of nuclear fuel. Send that to Defense. Move anything having to do with utilities to the Department of Commerce. The Energy Department’s support of research could be merged with the aforementioned block grants sent to higher education. As far as eliminating the Cabinet post for veterans’ affairs is concerned, I hope that people do not see it as a lack of support for veterans. Far from it. However it makes no sense to me that this is not in the Department of Defense. Veterans have to deal with not one, but two soulless bureaucracies independent of each other with officials guarding their turf and people’s lives in the balance. If there is some reason that veterans need advocates outside of DoD, the Department of Health and Human Services should be able to perform those functions without the massive overhead that comes with a separate Cabin! et department. Finally, axe the National Endowment for the Arts. It’s a luxury we cannot afford and Obama uses it as his Ministry of Propaganda anyway.

The fact is that the United States is approaching a debt crisis. Obama’s strategy lies in driving up massive amounts of spending despite the fact that the country is broke. Bunning’s frustration is our frustration. Picking on the unemployed was not a good tactic, but at the very least the senior senator from the Commonwealth of Kentucky underscored the fact that we need to start cutting government immediately.