Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Senator-elect Mark Kirk is talking about fiscal responsibility. Be afraid.

What Senator-elect Mark Kirk said on election night:

"Tonight, the people of Illinois have spoken, and your vote was heard around the world. It was a vote for fiscal responsibility..."

What the Congressional Budget Office said in January 2001 when Congressman Mark Kirk and President George Bush took office:

"The outlook for the federal budget over the next decade continues to be bright. Assuming that current tax and spending policies are maintained, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that mounting federal revenues will continue to outstrip spending and produce growing budget surpluses for the next 10 years. The update of CBO's budget outlook that this chapter describes continues a trend, since 1997, of steady and sometimes dramatic improvement, reflecting the continuing impact of strong economic growth over the past few years ...

"Under current policies, total surpluses would accumulate to an estimated $2 trillion over the next five years and $5.6 trillion over the coming decade. Such large surpluses would be sufficient by 2006 to pay off all debt held by the public that will be available for redemption.

"Within those totals, on-budget surpluses would accumulate to nearly $1 trillion over the next five years and about $3.1 trillion over the 2002-2011 period. On-budget surpluses would range between just over 1 percent to more than 3 percent of GDP. Off-budget surpluses also would total about $1 trillion over the next five years and about $2.5 trillion through 2011. Off-budget surpluses alone would be sufficient to eliminate the debt available for redemption by the end of the 10-year period."
~

Union of Concerned* Scientists says "Welcome Your Freshman Class of Climate Deniers"

* But keep in mind that "concerned" is generally a euphemism for "commie."

The freshman class in their own words (from a UCS e-mail):

"With the possible exception of Tiger Woods, nothing has had a worse year than global warming. We have discovered that a good portion of the science used to justify 'climate change' was a hoax perpetrated by leftist ideologues with an agenda." —Todd Young, new congressperson from Indiana

"I absolutely do not believe that the science of man-caused climate change is proven. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I think it’s far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity or something just in the geologic eons of time where we have changes in the climate." —Ron Johnson, new senator from Wisconsin

"I think we ought to take a look at whatever the group is that measures all this, the IPCC, they don't even believe the crap." —Steve Pearce, new congressperson from New Mexico

"It's a bigger issue, we need to watch 'em. Not only because it may or may not be true, but they're making up their facts to fit their conclusions. They've already caught 'em doing this." —Rand Paul, new senator from Kentucky

"There isn't any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the earth." —Roy Blunt, new senator from Missouri

To which you could add:

Bobby Schilling, IL-17 - "He doesn’t believe in global warming, putting him at odds with almost every major climate change expert in the world but in good standing with his base." (But with a name like Schilling, what could possibly go wrong? Ed.)

Randy Hultgren, IL-14 - "So, I don’t believe we have a significant impact on climate change. Now that said, I do think we have great responsibility as humans for stewardship of our world, and so there are things that we can do to make sure that our environment is well preserved for and I think that is really where we need to get to. So much of this effort dealing with climate change is literally billions and trillions of dollars that’s being spent to affect maybe tenths of a degree or hundredths of a degree of temperature. So we might be able, by spending trillions of dollars to lower our temperature by one one-hundreths of a degree, but that’s so minor and one blip of the sun could completely change it back by so much more. So, just a variation of a sun-spot or whatever that could have that kind of impact. So, again, I’m concerned with the amount of money and the impact on our productivity that we’re having focused on climate change when really I think we have very little direct impact on that." (Again with the sunspots? Ed.)