Deficit Reduction Commission...Is Bailed Out

I kid you not.

I wish this was a joke:  As the Daily Caller reported today, our government has become so ironic that the very entity responsible for reducing the federal government's national deficit has been...bailed out.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid indicated in a May 28 letter that the commission had complained to him about inadequate resources. Commission members griped they didn’t have enough money to hold hearings around the country, according to a report by Tax Analysts, a non-profit website.

But now the commission’s executive director, Bruce Reed, says its budget issues have been resolved, thanks to help from the White House.  Reed, a former top aide to then-President Bill Clinton, says the administration dispatched 10-15 aides from the Treasury Department and several other agencies to meet the commission’s needs.

Only can reality be so strange. Only in America, the land of the "free" and the home of the bailed out. 

The amount of money is but a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of federal spending; but I tell you what, this sort of thing has to stop someday before the joke becomes complete bankruptcy of everything American.

Read the rest of the tragically ironic Daly Caller article here. 

The GM Bailout

Here's a great new cartoon -- just for YAL -- from freelance illustrator Brian Defferding.  Brian explains:

This cartoon is a direct retort to a Mike Thompson cartoon recently ran in
the Detroit Free Press, about the "seven dirty words can't say in
Washington" about GM claiming to repay their loan from Uncle Sam.  The
reality of their claim is that they are actually giving money back to
the government using government money in order to get even more
government money.  So I made a cartoon mocking his.

Napolitano: Geithner May Face Criminal Charges

WaPo also reports on Geithner's troubles:

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner must have felt as if he'd made a wrong turn in the Rayburn House Office Building, and instead of taking a seat before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform had wound up at the Committee on Insult and Abuse.

It was a rare moment of bipartisan agreement: Republicans and Democrats alike seemed to detest the guy....When Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) asked another question about the lack of transparency, Geithner couldn't be troubled. "Well, I'm not sure if you were here for the prior conversation," he replied.  "I've been here the entire time," Fortenberry said.

The question is how much longer Geithner will be here.

Watch Ron Paul's take on the situation below the jump.

Congress working to deliver bailout for USPS

From Politico.com:

Democrats moved Thursday to give special relief to the financially strapped Postal Service, which would be allowed to defer $4 billion in payments due at the end of this month to cover retirement benefits for its employees.

Republicans protested the bailout but made no significant effort to block the provision, which has now been attached to a stop-gap spending bill slated to come before the House and Senate in the next week.

This isn't the first time, nor the largest amount that that USPS has requested this year:

The U.S. Postal Service — known in the tech world as “snail mail” — is in the midst of a financial meltdown of its own... The postal service has asked Congress for $25 billion over eight years in financial relief...