Republican Bacon

The one thing that can derail a congressman is failure to bring home the bacon.

There is a belief that Republicans want to reduce the budget and Democrats want to increase it.  It really isn't true, both parties just want to spend money in different ways.

In the reality of Washington, our insistence on not taxing our people enough to pay our bills leads to a deficit.

Now the majority of the deficit is caused by entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare, and a few others.  They are the only places you could see cuts big enough to make a difference.

The rest of the budget, excluding interest on the national debt represents about 25% of the total and it is this which gets shuffled about.

The majority of this is spent on defense and neither side is looking to cut that so you are left with the dregs of the budget, such as the EPA, Arts, Science, Veterans etc, etc.

You can gut foreign aid to fund more defense but the deficit doesn't change.

Now, remember each congressman knows what federal programs operate in their districts.  Cutting one on those and eliminating jobs is never a good policy.  Shutting down the local social security office and making people drive further is simply going to cost votes.

This is why the budget is so hard to control.  Now you may think the government is wasteful, and similarly to all other human endeavors, I'm sure it is to some extent, but its not really much different than any enterprise.

When you cut a budget the inefficiency doesn't get better, it generally gets worse as work is transferred and starts over, workloads become more unmanageable and morale suffers.  Now to coin a phrase, everybody but the current president knows its pretty complex.

However, getting a budget to pass requires appeasing members who have to get re-elected.

No one is porkier than republicans so it should be fun to watch.