The Trouble With Harry

UPDATE: (and below) Reid "vastly overstated annual attendance figures for the federally subsidized National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Nevada."


Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nv) rationale for railing against proposed Republican budget cuts:

The mean-spirited bill, H.R. 1 . . . eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts. These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.

Powerline's John Hinderaker exposes the fallacy in Reid's reasoning. My reaction is both more infantile and more satisfying:

There was an old man from Nevada
Who, 'gainst budget cuts, should'a tried harder.
Than shooting his wad
On tax-funded cowboy bards
Once again swapping sense for bravado.

MORE:

Mark Steyn on the Corner:

But what’s more difficult to figure out is why everyone doesn’t mock -- and why Senator Reid (and presumably senior flunkies in the bloated emir-sized retinues that now attend our "citizen-legislators") thought this would be a persuasive line of argument. . . Harry Reid seems to have figured that it’s in America’s interest (or, at any rate, his) to spend like there’s no tomorrow even as the clock chimes quarter-to-midnight. And, when the Complacent Caballero tells you that we cannot contemplate doing anything as "mean-spirited" as a $50,000 cut in a poetry festival, he’s telling you it’s over.

(via reader Warren)