STENY HOYER AND THE TELLING OF MORE LIES…

Ordinarily I would have included this post as yet another chapter in my continuing saga, ‘The Gasbag Chronicles, starring Steny Hoyer”.  But on this occasion I chose to simply bring up another example of the sheer idiocy of the man from the People’s Republic of Maryland.  Because, you see, it’s according to Steny, who made his point from the House floor, that if Congress does not pass a Department of Homeland Security funding bill by the end of the week, it would shut down the department, but that 200,000 of the department’s 230,000 employees would still go to work.  So I don’t see how that can be termed a “shut down.”

“The Department of Homeland Security will not be funded,” said Hoyer. “There are 230,000 people who work at that Department, and 30,000 of them, mostly administrative personnel, will be laid off. The others, known as critically important important—essential employees who are on the front line—will work, but they won’t get paid.”  I’m sorry, but these days I have very little sympathy for over-paid and underworked government employees.  And if it were to go as the last supposed “shut down” did, all of these poor government workers will probably make out pretty well getting any back pay owed, plus some!

Also it has been over the course of the last few weeks, but especially just the last few days, that we have been subjected to all manner of scare tactics regarding how it is that we would be exposing ourselves if we were to permit the shutting down of the Department of Homeland Security.  And it was in that vein that Steny said, “We can lament what others have done to undermine our national security, and share—I think in a bipartisan way—the conclusion that we ought not to further those enterprises, but as I said, Mr. Speaker, by our own hand we are about to shut down the Department of Homeland Security.”

But it’s by Steny’s own admission that the agency will not actually be shut down.  And if Steny and his fellow Democrats find themselves so concerned about those folks who will be going without a paycheck, then there’s a very simple solution.  Support the legislation that has already been passed in the House.  Why is it that the Republicans are always to be the ones forced to capitulate and the Democrats are ‘always’ the ones to get their way?  Up to this point Boehner is holding firm when it comes to his position that the Senate needs to do its job.  But with each passing day I expect to hear how he too has chosen to surrender.

You’ll have to excuse me, but when the only thing that I have to go on is what I’ve seen come from Boehner, at least in the way of showing any amount of political courage, it frightens me no end that at this particular moment in time that he is now the only person standing between ‘We the People’ and an out of control president who, together with his blatantly corrupt party, seem very determined to destroy our country.  I say a little prayer every single night that Boehner will do the right thing and 00not wilt under the pressure that will surely come his way if he does, in fact, continue to stand with the people.  I’m holding my breath.