Tim Pawlenty, Big Spender

As part of his campaign to out-Romney Mitt Romney in the right-wing-pandering department, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty wants to reinstate the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on openly gay service in the military.

According to the GAO, it turns out the ban cost almost $200 million over fiscal 2004-2009, or an average of $53,000 per discharged service member. And that’s just five years. As we know, discrimination is expensive. From PoliticsDaily:

Some 39 percent of the dismissed service members “held critical occupations, such as infantryman and security forces,” the GAO said. That percentage included 23 experts who held skills in an important foreign language, “such as Arabic or Spanish.”

This is the same Pawlenty who demands federal spending cuts and opposes raising the debt limit (i.e., deficit financing).

Shall we ask the Governor, then, just which program he’d cut (Medicare? school lunches? the defense budget?) to reinstate discrimination in the armed forces? Or perhaps he’d prefer to raise taxes? He could call it the Safe Showers Surtax.

Ah…but rhetoric is free.

13 Comments for “Tim Pawlenty, Big Spender”

  1. posted by Jorge on

    Yay! Write one off!

  2. posted by Tom on

    Ah … but rhetoric is free.

    Do you suppose that Pawlenty’s transparent pandering will cost him votes/donations from gay and lesbian conservatives?

    • posted by Carl on

      I would hope his record in Minnesota – didn’t he say he would veto a bill that even allowed partnership rights – and his ties to Michelle Bachmann would do that already. But some of the media pundits have been pushing him for years, and they usually get their way.

    • posted by Tom on

      I don’t think Pawlenty’s going anywhere fast. Voters can smell desperation and don’t like it.

      But it looks like Bachmann might be lining herself up for a run at 2012 when Palin finishes up the job of shooting herself in the foot.

      Bachmann was in Iowa last night at a major fundraiser, has been tapped to give the Tea Party response to the State of the Union address on Tuesday, and is lined up for a series of forums with the Iowa religious right in April.

      Unlike Palin, who is rapidly turning herself into a laughing stock, Bachmann seems to be positioning herself well for the Iowa caucuses.

      • posted by LJ on

        Hey guys. New to the forum. Found it linked on Tammy Bruce’s site. The discussion is about Pawlenty, but I must disagree re: Palin. Palin is leaving DADT alone as she is not sucking up to the Rinos like P and Romney. I don’t think anyone is laughing at Palin, who will not sit down and shut up. It is my belief that they are scared crapless of her because she connects with a wide range of voters on a base level. They know she is the only real threat to The Precious. I’ll be out and say I’m a Palin supporter, but I don’t believe the left wing Memo that she’s done. They tried to politically assasinate her, then told her she injected herself in to the story, trashed her for weeks and then put out pools (with no cross tabs on the breakdown of who they were polling) touting her unfavorables and unelectability. Its too convenient.

        • posted by LJ on

          Haha…I wish there was a Palin pool to swim around in! Alas, I meant “then put out polls.”

        • posted by Jorge on

          What? A gay person who likes Sarah Palin? I didn’t think you could get much more heterosexual than all that soccer mom imagery.

          Must be a Lucy Lawless thing.

          Unfortunately I think most people thought she overextended herself when she tried to put it away. The other thing you have to consider is that the Tea Party has already won big. 2012 may be the price to pay for 2010.

          • posted by LJ on

            It’s insulting, belittling and pedestrian to write it off as a “Lucy Lawless” thing. Unfortunately, that reaction is all top common. Perhaps it should be considered, especially at the Independent Gay Forum, that there are other issues that are important to gay men then social issues which I must assume is at the root of your snide comment. Perhaps, that’s why I no longer participate and respect the Democratic party because while I am eternally frustrated by the “values voter” conservative supporters, I don’t appreciate that as a gay, I am lumped in to the left’s own version of that.

      • posted by Carl on

        Bachmann loves attention, but the party is wary of her, and considering her antics in Minnesota, which helped lose the party a number of seats in 2004 and 2006, it’s not hard to see why. I think she might be angling for a VP nomination, but after Palin 2008 I’m not sure I can see that happening again.

  3. posted by North Dallas Thirty on

    Shall we ask the Governor, then, just which program he’d cut (Medicare? school lunches? the defense budget?) to reinstate discrimination in the armed forces?

    I do so love when leftists like Rauch try to pretend to be fiscal conservatives.

    But, let’s be a sport and play the game. $200 million over five years translates to $40 million per year, so let’s see where we can find that money.

    Congress’s cut of 5% in its expenses generates $35 million per year.

    Generating $40 million per year would be a matter of cutting 0.43 percent of the $9.3 billion dollar annual Federal school lunch budget.

    You wouldn’t even have to cut Planned Parenthood’s funding completely. Merely reducing the $349 million they were paid in 2008 by 11.5% would generate the requisite $40 mil and still leave them plenty of money to purchase new scissors for their spinal-cord snipping.

    $40 million may seem like a lot to you, but it is in fact 0.27% of the $15 billion that the Washington Post in 2006 (“Harvesting Cash”) estimated was wasted annually in agricultural subsidiaries — and a princely 0.81% of the $5 billion annually wasted on ethanol subsidies.

    Next, but certainly not least, $40 million is less than one-tenth of one percent of the estimated $60 billion that Medicare loses annually on fraudulent claims.

    And not surprisingly, an annual expense of $40 million translates to 0.0075 PERCENT of the annual defense budget of $533.8 billion dollars — or, put in perspective, leaving an eight-cent tip for a $10 lunch bill.

    So frankly, it’s a rounding error — and one well worth it to avoid another Bradley Manning or the inevitable lawsuits from gay-sex liberals who don’t understand why they can’t ogle men in the shower.

    And, since we’re playing the game that the way to reduce costs is to reduce discharges, by simply changing the weight rules we could save $60 million per year.

    So frankly put, on the government scale, it costs the military nothing to get rid of super-soldiers like Bradley Manning — and, when one considers what it has cost just for the airplane to fly Hillary around on her worldwide apology tour for Bradley Manning’s contributions to national security, $40 million a year to make sure soldiers like Manning are expelled is a bargain.

  4. posted by BobN on

    Once again I find myself wondering why ND hates gay servicemembers.

  5. posted by Throbert McGee on

    It’s insulting, belittling and pedestrian to write it off as a “Lucy Lawless” thing.

    Lighten up, Francis! I’m pretty sure Jorge was just kidding.

    I’m not saying that Jorge is necessarily pro-Palin; I’m just saying that unlike a lot of gay men, Jorge isn’t knee-jerkingly anti-Palin.

  6. posted by Michigan-Matt on

    Jonathan, I fully realize that IGF isn’t anything as lofty as FoxNews, but you might try crafting at least one item in 2011 that isn’t the usual, farLeft sop loaded with pure, democrat spin. Try making IGF a no spin zone… I know, very tough to do with David Link adding his 2 cents twice a week, but I think you could at least try.

    But, then again, expecting you to heed YOUR president’s call for more civil debate and respectful rhetoric would be like expecting NancyP to admit she was wrong for 2 yrs and the voters tossed her botoxed ass out of power for all the illiberal infractions.

    Of course, “rauch” in old German does mean smoke… so with all the mirrors you likely own for reflecting your glory, smoke and spin seems to be your lot once again.

    Sigh.

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