The Bunning Linguist
As the lone objector standing in the way of a bill extending unemployment benefits for Americans hard hit by the recession, Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning may at this moment be the most hated political figure in the United States. And with good reason. His obstructionist grandstanding has not only single-handedly halted the extension of some unemployment and COBRA benefits, but led to the furlough of thousands of transportation workers and even blocked the Medicare "doc" fix needed to prevent a 21% cut in physician compensation.
But when Bunning repeated "his insistence that the Senate not add an additional $10 billion to the deficit," he had a very specific meaning in mind. As his support for $2 trillion in domestic deficit spending during the Bush years makes clear, for Jim Bunning deficits only matter when a Democrat is in the White House.
As it turns out, Bunning-speak prominently features both expletives deleted ("tough s**t" to Senate colleagues) and sign language (middle finger to reporters). It also includes a feigned concern about the federal budget deficit. As Bunning explained Monday:
"If we can't find $10 billion to pay for it, we're not going to pay for anything. We will not pay for anything fully on the floor of the U.S. Senate."
Of course, when George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office, Jim Bunning had no problem with never paying for anything.
Take, for example, the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. Bunning voted "Yea" on both. The 2001 and 2003 Bush windfalls for the wealthy didn't just carry $1.4 trillion and $550 billion price tags respectively. As the Center for American Progress detailed, they delivered over a third of their benefits to the richest 1% of taxpayers. And as analyses by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities revealed, the Bush tax cuts accounted for half of the deficits during his tenure and more than half over the next decade.
Then there's the 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit. With almost all of his Republican colleagues in the Senate, Bunning supported a Medicare expansion that was both unfunded and a massive payday for the pharmaceutical industry. As I noted in 2005:
A White House desperate for an election year win on Medicare deliberately misrepresented the program's costs in order to ensure passage. On December 8, 2003, President Bush rolled out a program he claimed would cost $400 billion over 10 years. Within two months, however, the White House notified Congress that the real price tag would approach $550 billion. When Medicare actuary Richard Foster sought to present the true price tag to Congress in late 2003, then agency chief Thomas Scully threatened to fire him. Fast forward two years and the estimated 10 year price tag for the Medicare prescription plan now exceeds $720 billion for its 43 million beneficiaries.
As CBPP and the New York Times among others documented, going forward the deficits produced Bush tax cuts not only dwarf the impact of TARP, the stimulus and revenue losses due to the recession. They also exceeded the combined total of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan plus the Medicare drug program, all deficit spending supported by Jim Bunning.
And supported as well by most of his Republican colleagues. This helps explain their reticence to criticize Bunning even as he takes his licks for playing games with unemployed Americans. As John Cornyn (R-TX) put it Friday, "I admire the courage of the junior senator from Kentucky," adding, "Somebody has to stand up finally and say, 'No more inter-generational theft!'" Of course, Vice President Dick Cheney explained 2002 what Jim Bunning is really saying now:
"Reagan proved deficits don't matter."
Not, that is, when a Republican is president.
UPDATE 1: While McClatchy tallies the real human toll from Bunning's one-man wrecking crew, Maine Senator Susan Collins reverses course and tries to stop his charade.
UPDATE 2: CNN has compiled a longer list of Bunning's Bush-era deficit spending spree. Meanwhile, ThinkProgress notes that Bunning supported an extension of unemployment benefits in 2003, even announcing, "This is hopeful news for our most needy families in Kentucky."
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