The final countdown

Three days and counting until the ax falls on federal spending – the pressure so intense that the Speaker of the house was driven to use intemperate language. We advise parents to cover the ears of young children.

“We should not have to move a third bill before the Senate gets off their ass and begins to do something,” said Speaker John Boehner.

Boehner used the word “ass” and he used it in the collective sense. CBS’s Scott Pelley noticed it immediately.

“You said the Senate has to get off his ass?”

“Yeah!” replied Boehner.

He also pointed out a disturbing trend in terms of the Speakers decision to invoke body parts.

“A few weeks ago you said that the President didn’t have the guts. Today you said the Senate has to get off its ass.”

We don’t even want to think about what may come next.
But you can see why he’s ticked off, because look at the first thing that got cut:

“You know, I’m supposed to have 34,000 detention beds for immigration. How do I pay for those?” asked Janet Napolitano.

Secretary of homeland security Napolitano was explaining why she had to release thousands of undocumented immigrants being detained for stuff like driving without a license.

What’s interesting about that is that immigrants rights groups have been demanding this release for years.

Now, I have no idea if the President is actually doing this – but it occurs to me that a President, seeing that budget cuts are inevitable, might suddenly realize that he can use them as a line item veto – to get rid of stuff he’s secretly happy to be rid of without being blamed for it.

That would be kind of underhanded, and very disingenuous, but also extremely clever.