Chanting Points Memo: The DFL Hides The Sausage Making Process
By Mitch Berg
The Dems latest sweeping meme – predating the State of the State, although it certainly appeared in it – is “why won’t the GOP send one big budget bill.
This is a meme – a chanting point – that can only be aimed at the ill-informed and not-well-read.
Draw your own conclusions.
At any rate, you see this from Democrats all up and down the food chain. Small Democrats, like Jeff Rosenberg at MNPublius, are carrying their masters’ water by telling us “Why A Piecemeal Budget Is Unacceptable“:
A piecemeal approach limits our ability to negotiate. That, of course, is the Republicans’ goal. They hope to trap Dayton into agreeing to their cuts so they don’t have to negotiate. But that sort of political strategy is a terrible way to make policy.
This is, of course, “2+2=5” material. A piecemeal approach requires negotiation – on every bit and piece of the budget.
The “piecemeal” approach – what Rep. Holberg calls “how you eat a hippo – one bite at a time” – takes the budget apart, down to all of its 32 billion pieces, or as close to it as has been done in recent years. It shines the light of legislative scrutiny on parts of our budget that have been on autopilot for generations.
It requires stakeholders in every single piece of that budget to negotiate for it.
The DFL, on the other hand, wants to take the Nancy Pelosi approach; they want to bundle up their whole, noxious $39 billion proposal and go at the whole festering mess. Like Obamacare, it’ll be such a thick book of gibberish that “we’ll have to pass it to see what’s in it”. And since nobody will read it all down to its most infinitesimal detail (other than King Banaian), and no legislative body can possibly sustain a debate on it, the “debate” will turn from the need for every single item in the budget to the imperative – invariably emotional (“why do you hate children and single mothyrs? Why do you want to put dioxin in their formula?”), invariably ill-informed, invariably trite – all traits that favor easy media consumption,and hence the DFL.
The DFL, above all, doesn’t want you to see how the budgetary sausage is made. They know the skeletons that are hidden deep inside the budget. They want You, The People, to remain blissfully, bovinely ignorant, and just shut up and be Happy to Pay For A Better Minnesota.
The GOP way shows Minnesotans how the sausage is made. That’s just gonna kill the DFL.
February 10th, 2011 at 9:40 am
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by mitchpberg, narnshow. narnshow said: Why does the DFL hate transparency? http://bit.ly/dFxOPP #stribpol #narn2 The case for the "piecemeal" budget. […]
February 10th, 2011 at 9:58 am
Excellent post!
February 10th, 2011 at 10:13 am
At the risk of working blue, the DFL would prefer to hide the salami.
February 10th, 2011 at 10:17 am
That material has been covered Mr. D.
Why just yesterday, Mitch’s stalker tweeted that he was glad to be giving Mitch’s baloney some attention.
February 10th, 2011 at 10:20 am
Ugh.
I’ve been successfully ignoring my stalker for a few days now – I had a fair number of people tell me the quality of my twitter feed improves, the less I interact with the little fella.
And it looks like I’m just gonna keep going with that.
February 10th, 2011 at 11:04 am
I think that this is the correct link to the mnpublius post:
http://mnpublius.com/post/3198280886/why-a-piecemeal-budget-bill-is-unacceptable
The post is short but I’m still trying to make sense of it. What, for example, does this paragraph mean?
A piecemeal approach limits our ability to negotiate. That, of course, is the Republicans’ goal. They hope to trap Dayton into agreeing to their cuts so they don’t have to negotiate. But that sort of political strategy is a terrible way to make policy.
February 10th, 2011 at 11:14 am
Terry,
That was why I cited that particular quote; it so completely beggars logic. It’s “2+2=5”.
(Cue Flash: “That’s because 2+2=5 on Shot In The Onion”)
(Cue Dog Gone: “Fact check: According to ThinkProgress, 2+2=Green”)
A key to understanding anything that’s too big is to make it smaller. That’s what the GOP is doing.
And “understanding” is the last thing the DFL wants.
February 10th, 2011 at 11:49 am
I do notice the conspicuous absence of Flash and Dog Gone (and Ratio Rick and Padraigwhatever) from this conversation. Perhaps the stock of Victory Gin has run perilously low.
I would support a constitutional amendment prohibiting any spending bill from being more than five pages in length. If it takes more than that to explain the need, you have FAILED in your argument.
February 10th, 2011 at 11:55 am
Turns out most of AFSCME’s employees in Wisc earn 6 figures. Do we have numbers for Minnesota?
http://maciverinstitute.com/2011/02/labor-leaders-living-large/
February 10th, 2011 at 12:01 pm
[…] zflag_sid="26"; var zflag_width="1"; var zflag_height="1"; var zflag_sz="15"; « Chanting Points Memo: The DFL Hides The Sausage Making Process […]
February 10th, 2011 at 12:06 pm
“This is a meme – a chanting point – that can only be aimed at the ill-informed and not-well-read.”
This is why our side stuggles. We need a little more ill-informedness and not-well-readiness. Stop gumming up the debate with reason and the constructs of human nature in the public sphere and we might win a few more cage matches with the DFL.
February 10th, 2011 at 12:12 pm
Mitch Berg said:
“I had a fair number of people tell me the quality of my twitter feed improves, the less I interact with the little fella”
It does. He provides no value, not even entertainment value. *shrug*
Terry quoted:
“A piecemeal approach limits our ability to negotiate”
It’s true and false:
1) They mostly use vague platitudes and B.S. during negotiation, and that wears thin relatively quickly (lets say a couple big-bills-worth of negotiation time). So their ability is limited, but it isn’t the fault of the “piecemeal approach”.
2) The “piecemeal approach” requires them to negotiate each budgetary item, each on its own terms. Since they are limited, negotiation-wise, it’s a losing proposition for them.
February 10th, 2011 at 12:56 pm
DFL: “Sausage? Oh, that. We put it just over there, under the table. You may have to bend over in order to see it clearly. That’s right. No, just a little to the left. A little more. Perfect!”
February 10th, 2011 at 1:36 pm
I would support a constitutional amendment prohibiting any spending bill from being more than five pages in length.
I’d prefer something simpler: no bill may spend more than 2% of the total budget.
Serves two purposes: makes the government justify each expense and slows down the legislature from passing other idiot measures.
Of course, I’d also put an automatic timer on all legislation that everything is dead after 10 years. If you can’t justify passing a program or law again after 10 years of implementation it should expire.
Keep the legislature busy with the real nuts and bolts of governing and don’t give ’em time to make mischief.
February 10th, 2011 at 1:41 pm
With a tax code that is 1000+ pages in volume, I would happily endorse some brevity in legislation. The US Constitution can be easily carried in your pocket.
February 10th, 2011 at 5:24 pm
” takes the budget apart, down to all of its 32 billion pieces”
And there lies the secret! In recent days I’ve watched one Dim or another say on the TV that doing this or that will only save maybe 1 – 2 mil, like it’s hardly worth their effort or time. Baloney, 1-2 mil here and there, one program defunded here or there, and now you have a chance of getting to your 6, or 8, or 10 billion cut out of the behemoth. Not only that but you will have the opportunity to see where in the budget the black holes lie. We need to wring out every nickel we can from every portion of the monster that is the State budget.
Damn the bedwetters, lets make them justify every single penny!!
Without PogoStick and Big Mak carrying his water Mad Mark is adrift without a paddle.
February 14th, 2011 at 7:01 am
[…] makes perfect sense for them to tear the budget, and its reforms, down into its component parts. We’ve discussed this, and we will no doubt discuss it […]