Balancing the Budget is a Process

Rush Limbaugh spent a great deal of time today discussing the US's budget problem - and there's no denying that we do have a budget problem. Frankly, the US is bankrupt - and several states are bankrupt - and yet that doesn't seem to be stoppig us from continuing to send money to practically every country under the sun, and fund ridiculous programs and studies that have no value.

But how can Obama - or any President - fix the budget problem, when it's the Senate that fixes that budget?

RUSH: During the campaign for the November elections, the pledge was to cut $100 billion -- and when that pledge was made, folks, I have to tell you, that's largely symbolic. It's a good step, I guess, but $100 billion, we're be still talking pennies. This was not an election that was eked out in the final moments. This was a tsunami, and it's gonna take a whole bunch of tsunamis to continue to roll this back. We're not gonna roll this back with baby steps. We need a series of tsunamis, like the November election.

Okay, but, anyway, during the November election the pledge was to cut $100 billion, and then when there wasn't a budget and we went to a continuing resolution format, that got reduced to $61 billion on a prorated basis because we lost five months there; and then $61 billion became too much and we ended up at $38 billion. My question is, why promise $100 billion, and then why reduce the hundred billion to $61 billion and reduce that to $38.5 billion? What changed during all of this? Where did we start losing leverage? Where did we start losing ground? Obama's poll numbers didn't start skyrocketing upward. What happened?

This is what I don't understand: Why even promise $100 billion if you don't mean it and then reduce it to $61 billion? Okay, we'll go for that on a prorated basis, but then that's too much. So we're down to $38 billion. What changed? There was a great opportunity here because of leverage and these opportunities don't come along very often. The Democrats and the left didn't get us to where we are today by compromising. Pelosi never compromised. Tip O'Neill never compromised. It's not even a word in their vocabulary. Thanks to the RINOs and other wishy-washy politicians, the Republican Party has almost been compromised out of existence.

This is often a refrain from Rush Limbaugh - the Democrats never compromise, but the Republicans always do.