CORKER’S BUDGET STRAIGHT-TALK
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., often punctuates his public remarks with the term “I’m sorry” before he delivers words that are antithetical to public perception or to conventional political wisdom. He needn’t be sorry. He usually has just hit the nail on the head. The latest time was Wednesday in Corker’s remarks during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” where he criticized the federal budget process and the omnibus spending bill that does nothing to address the country’s spending problem.
“I’m one of the few guys left around here, I think, that cares about our fiscal issues,” he said of the funded-through-September budget that is expected to pass the House and Senate in the next few days, “and I realize we’re in a party-time atmosphere here now. But I’m sorry, I just cannot support it. Throw tomatoes at me, if you will. It has nothing to do with who won, who lost [in the omnibus negotiations]. I could care less about that. What I do care about is the long-term fiscal situation in our nation, and this bill doesn’t appropriately deal with that.”
Corker has long criticized the kick-the-can-down-the-road approach to government funding, and ignoring Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as part of the budget process is doing exactly that.
“You cannot take 70 percent of our spending off the table,” he said. “You just cannot do that. I’m sorry. [Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are] not only where all the money is, [they are] where all the growth and spending is. If you’ve got a Congress and a president that says, ‘Hey, we’re not touching any of this, I’m sorry, this is not going to be part of our process,’ what you’re really doing is saying we have no desire to solve our nation’s fiscal issues.”
President Donald Trump’s early budget document called for large cuts — many that had been needed for years — in areas of the 30 percent of the budget that was left. But the budget deal the Congress has worked out basically keeps things where they were.
That should be troubling to all Americans, but it certainly is to Corker.
“It’s just we’re not going to deal with it,” he said. “I’m not going to vote for things that I know are just an obfuscation of our responsibilities, and you know, that’s the way it is.”
A day later, Corker suggested the foreign policy end of the Trump administration also needed shaping up. He was referring specifically to the White House’s strategic ongoing talks with China, then suddenly pivoting to a discussion of South Korea paying for certain missiles.
“I really do think words matter,” the former Chattanooga mayor told MSNBC. “… There needs to be an organizing structure. I’m sorry. I think we’ve got tremendous talent over there. People that I really have a great relationship with, but thus far it’s not hitting on all eight [cylinders].”
If more of the 100 U.S. senators had the same kind of honesty as Corker about the country’s needed deliberations, some of its most knotty problems might be able to finally be untangled.