Less than one month ago, Rep. Hare was loudly trumpeting his vote for PAYGO:

“Congressman Phil Hare (D-IL) today voted for legislation that requires Congress to pay for any new spending or tax cuts, a process known as Pay-As-You-Go or PAYGO. The bill now heads to the President’s desk.

If signed, any increase in spending will have to be offset by spending decreases elsewhere or by finding additional revenue. Likewise, any tax cuts will have to be accompanied by decreases in spending because of that lost revenue.

“The days of excessive borrowing, wasteful spending, and massive tax cuts must come to an end,” Hare said. “PAYGO provides us the best opportunity to return to fiscal sanity so we do not pass our bills onto our children and grandchildren.”

However, that was then, this is now.  Now it’s “forget PAYGO, people are suffering!!!”  In his latest press release, Hare “slams” (his word – wow! what a tough guy!) Senator Jim Bunning for refusing to allow the extension of unemployment benefits for (another) month:

“Yesterday, I stood side-by-side with my Democratic and Republican colleagues in the House to extend unemployment insurance and the COBRA subsidy for one month. Yet the actions of a lone opponent, Republican Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky, have prevented similar action from taking place in the Senate and will ultimately lead to these programs expiring this weekend.

“It is more apparent than ever, with this latest affront to working families, the Senate is broken and needs to be reformed.”

First off, is Rep. Hare so stupid that he does not know the difference between one who is “working” and hence, does not need an extension of unemployment benefits, and one who is unemployed?  Apparently not, as he thinks the failure to extend benefits (meaning the persons are already receiving them) is somehow an “affront to working families.”  But if one is working, can we not safely assume they are not also receiving unemployment benefits?  Maybe I shouldn’t ask… 

Second, whence Hare’s devotion to “pay as you go”?  For Senator Bunning’s objection was due primarily to the fact that Congress had not come up with any offsets (reduced spending or increased taxes) to pay for the extension of benefits, as required by PAYGO.  As noted by Senator Kyl:

“This is a temporary extension. It’s over $10 billion. And all Senator Bunning was saying, quite correctly, is it ought to be paid for. Congress just passed the so-called pay-go legislation which is supposed to require that we find offsets or other savings if we’re going to spend money,” Kyl said. “We exempt this bill from it. … The question for the longer term extension is a different issue, because that’s well over $100 billion.” 

Third, the bill would extend unemployment benefits for only 400,000 people.  Shoot, the Obama/Hare jobs machine can “create or save” that many jobs in a weekend, right?  er, well…..

Finally, notice how Hare says that this action means that “the Senate is broken and needs to be reformed”?  What do you think that refers to?  Oh, that’s right — that darn filibuster, which is currently hampering the Democrats from forcibly shoving its health care crap sandwich down our throats.

Guess what, Mr. Hare?  What the unemployed need is a job, not another extension of government benefits.  And what we need is a representative who knows the difference between a good job, and another unfunded government handout for which our children will be paying.  As Rep. Hare stated back then, ““PAYGO provides us the best opportunity to return to fiscal sanity so we do not pass our bills onto our children and grandchildren.”

In any event, if the Obama/Hare “stimulus” had created the “jobs, jobs, jobs” that were promised, perhaps these 400,000 people would already be employed, wouldn’t they?  Not that Hare would know the difference.