Now, in Washington, when you increase spending, say, 5%, Democrats will call that a cut. If the budget said we were going to go up 8%, but we only go up 5%, they call that a cut. We’ve covered this lie for years.
That’s what they said about the school lunch program back in 1995, when they were accusing Republicans of starving kids and so forth. The school lunch program actually went up, but it didn’t go up as much as they wanted it to go up, so the Democrats called it a cut. 
A cut in Washington is never an actual reduction. Just ask yourself when the federal budget has ever become smaller. It doesn’t. So there are rarely any cuts. Genuine cuts did occur in the federal budget during the Clinton-Gore years in the area of defense. Those were genuine cuts for a few years, but for the most part, the budget goes up every year. It just may not go up as much as the baseline says it should for whatever reason, so the Democrats call that a cut.
Well, the Senate got a pay raise this week. The Senate got a 3.1% raise, but lo and behold Tom Daschle says it’s not a raise! He calls it “a cost of living increase.” Can you believe this? It was an increase to keep these impoverished senators up with inflation, but it’s not a raise. Oh, no. Not a raise.
Tom, you should have called this a pay cut if you want to be consistent with the way you look at the budget. I’d have loved to see Greta’s reaction to that. That’s what you say anytime a budget item goes up X percent of what it should have gone up. The Senate just took a pay cut. That’s how you need to look at it to understand how these guys operate.
