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Common Sense

Money to Burn

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What if you could spend money you have no legal right to spend? Maybe even billions and billions of dollars? What if you knew you wouldn’t get caught? Would you do it?

I guess it depends on what kind of person you are.

One kind of person would spend all those billions without any thought about right and wrong. A better person would say, “Hey, this isn’t right! I don’t care if I get caught or not, this ain’t right, by golly!”

Well, we’ve had this situation in Congress for years, except now the bad guys are getting caught. Congress has to authorize a spending program. When the authorization lapses, they have to authorize it again to keep it going.

Except way too often they don’t bother, because they know they can’t get the votes. If career politicians don’t have the guts to cast the “Yes” vote to keep a program going, the funding for it should stop too, so we can all save some money.

But that isn’t what’s been happening.

Freshman Congressman Tom Tancredo has discovered 247 programs costing a total of $120 billion bucks that have not been authorized by Congress this year. Tancredo recently succeeded in passing an amendment requiring greater disclosure of unauthorized spending, ripping the cloak of secrecy from this dishonest practice. He’s been working with the Citizen Legislators Caucus, made up of other members with self-imposed term limits.

They’re willing to fight the establishment to do what’s right. Just like you and I would.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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