Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Webb-Edgington strains at gnat, swallows camel

Kentucky 4th congressional candidate Alecia Webb-Edgington went on CN2 last week claiming that she had to vote against the House version of the state budget because of "fluff" in the bill. Asked to define the fluff, she explained that she couldn't vote for a budget that included a $14,500 appropriation for a curtain divider at a state park.

The amount of waste in both the House and Senate bills goes so far beyond $14k that it is incredible this example was all she could come up with.

I couldn't find the curtain divider in the Senate budget, but the last fifteen pages of both versions of HB 265, the executive branch budget, contain a framework for implementing ObamaCare in Kentucky through the Department of Insurance. That's a whole lot more than fourteen thousand dollars and much less useful than a curtain divider.

Also, both bills spend hundreds of millions of dollars we don't have and both do next to nothing to address the oncoming public employee pension system bankruptcy. Rep. Webb-Edgington should have to explain in greater detail how her incomplete lurch to the right on budget bills qualifies her to run for Congress.

Whether she votes for the final budget bill or not, Webb-Edgington missed a great chance to be a voice for fiscal reason before it is too late.