Pigs in Spaciness: Congress' massive pushback to Obama's little gesture

A pathetic little $17 billion out of a gargantuan $3.4 trillion budget was all he had in his sights -- about half of John McCain's much-snickered-at earmark-fixation last year -- just to show Mr. & Mrs. Taxpayer that Obamaism isn't only about spend, spend, spend. As un-spending goes, it was pure symbolism -- not even a flesh wound on the bloated corpus of a hemorrhaging deficit.

It was necessarily meant as an elegantly subtle gesture -- almost subliminal -- since the rhetoric couldn't begin to match the reality. Nevertheless, as the Washington Post framed it this morning with somewhat Swiftian humor, Obama's "modest proposal ... quickly ran into a buzz saw of opposition on Capitol Hill."

Welcome to Pigland, Mr. President, where brutish snorting and rooting trump elegance every time.

Nearly all of Obama's fiscal targets were, well, laughably inarguable -- such as "a $35 million-a-year long-range radio navigation system" that is and indeed has been, since the advent of GPS, laughably "obsolete." Or the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation, which is just ... laughable: At a mere $1 million a year it's meant to "encourage and support research, study and labor designed to produce new discoveries in all fields of endeavor for the benefit of mankind" (says its Web site). Now, it may be that for only $1 million the CCFF could in fact benefit mankind in all fields of endeavor next year, but, sadly, it actually can't, since 80 percent of its budget is "going to administrative overhead."

My favorite, though, is the presidentially unrequested, presidentially unwanted new presidential helicopter, which this year alone chopped up $835 million. Who will rid me of this troublesome contraption? the king has bellowed repeatedly; yet Lord Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), whose district is assembling the wretchedly extravagant thing, "vowed to force the White House to accept delivery."

And then there are those rugged-individualist farmers and their rugged-individualist extortionists -- otherwise know as farm-state U.S. senators and representatives -- historically disdainful of others' welfare but lined up at the public trough for so long they wouldn't know how else to eat. Obama's truly modest proposal to cut federal "subsidies to farms with more than $500,000 in sales"? Yeah, right, when pigs sprout wings.

However even more devilishly ensconced, not to mention costly, are all those shiny toys that go boom and their many Defense defenders. The F-22 Raptor fighter, from which Obama wants to cut $2.9 billion next year, is but the latest example of the Pentagon's ingenious geopolitics: the fly boys in D.C. have scattered the fighter's production across 40 states and at least as many districts, rendering it exceedingly popular. Necessary? No matter.

But merely as a general political principle, presidential calls to rein in wasteful defense spending -- even when packaged in the sickly symbolism of minor prudence and almost negligible frugality -- are sure to be met with thundering demagoguery.

Sen. John Cornyn's recent speechifying is exemplary: President Obama "seems to be forcing the Pentagon to make some needlessly tough choices -- even as they justify trillions of dollars for domestic spending," he says. (I wonder if the good senator and those embattled Pentagon boys would be willing to forfeit the federal cost of their health care and redirect it to the F-22?)

Cornyn went on to bemoan Obama's "wrong budget priorities for our country." And he of course threw this old chestnut on the demagogic fire: "Given the threats we face, now is not the time to cash in a peace dividend."

Could someone please point to just one decade since the Second World War when it was the time to cash in our peace dividend? The endless bloating of our defense expenditures and global 800-pound gorilla apparatus has got to be the most elusive, sprawling Madofflike investment we've ever made.

But back to the opening point: Was Obama's symbolism worth it? The force of the action taken was weak, yet reaction to it was far from equal and opposite. "The Republican National Committee ... sent an e-mail blast to reporters that said the proposed cuts would 'barely make a dent' " in the multi-trillion-dollar budget; House Minority Leader John Boehner had an excuse to sarcastically belittle Obama's "newfound attention to saving taxpayer dollars"; and other GOP ghouls, such as Sen. Judd Gregg, were handed the perfect opportunity to appear on cable news and decry what's "not even a [fiscal] band aid."

By the way, according to the (still, as far as I know) Boston Globe, from July 2008, last year "Gregg sponsored the most earmarks among the state's delegations, attaching his name to 66 appropriations requests totaling about $94 million." Now Judd, I realize that was but a dram in the pig-slop of miasmic federal spending, but shouldn't we -- that is, especially you, O Critical One -- start somewhere?

That sort of gross hypocrisy, however, rarely gets covered. Obama's little flourish, on the other hand, gets ridiculed with gleeful media attentiveness.

So, bottom line, was the symbolism a smart move? I very much doubt it. But of this I have no doubt: I'm applying today for that heretofore unexpungeable "Department of Education attache [job] based in Paris that costs $632,000 per year," with a $77,000 living-quarters allowance and $21,000 for travel. Oink-oink.