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Yglesias: Asking NIH to Get By On 95.7% of Its Current Budget? The Sky Is Falling!

Posted on | November 10, 2010 | 7 Comments

“Dire consequences,” the Harvardian at Think Progress says, echoing predictions of “devastating” results from . . . uh, the director of the agency whose budget might get cut by 4.3%.

No matter how serious the deficit, there will always be intellectuals who tell us that any proposal to reduce federal spending — even by a measly 4.3% — is devastating, catastrophic, apocalyptic, whatever scary adjective comes to mind.

Thus the draft proposal of President Obama’s bipartisan deficit-reduction commission is “unacceptable” to Nancy Pelosi, who perhaps doesn’t realize that she recently lost the power to declare what is or is not “acceptable” in Washington.

Allahpundit recommends the collection of “apocalyptic quotes from hysterical progressives” aggregated by ABC’s Jake Tapper. But Tapper also quotes Grover Norquist saying “this commission is merely an excuse to raise net taxes on the American people.”

Ace invokes P.J. O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores.

UPDATE: A belated welcome to Instapundit readers. By now you know that the White House has given in on the “Bush tax cuts” — which thereby become the “Obama tax cuts.” Did you know, however, that you could have made a profit of more than 17% in six months if you had listened to Glenn Beck?

Category: Economics

Comments

7 Responses to “Yglesias: Asking NIH to Get By On 95.7% of Its Current Budget? The Sky Is Falling!”

  1. Dsrickel
    November 11th, 2010 @ 3:34 am

    Can things get worse than devastating, apocalyptic, catastrophic? I don’t see how. So it should be just as easy to live with a 20% cut as a 5% cut.

  2. Dsf
    November 11th, 2010 @ 9:54 am

    If the panel was serious, they would be looking at whole departments cut axe, not “reduce” by 4%.