White House Tours Now More Important Than Eating, Praying, Pretty Much Everything In Universe

Does anyone know what the greatest threat to our Republic is today? Could it be the ever-expanding power of the unitary executive? Income inequality? Exploding health care costs? High unemployment? Marshmallows? No, silly Wonket. Everyone knows it is spending. Specifically spending on the White House by King Obama XVI and his wife Michelle Antoinnette, who love to use taxpayer money for fancy vacations and four-star chefs and their own private plane. If standing in long airport lines and having our genitals cupped by lonely TSA agents “providing security” is good enough for us plebiscites, it should be good enough for you, Nobama!

Remember when the royal couple put up expensive Christmas decorations to celebrate our nation’s most beloved orgy of consumerism even though everyone knows the king is a secret Muslim who is actually waging a war on Christmas and plans to outlaw the holiday by executive fiat now that he does not have to worry about re-election? Probably he’ll do that sometime in August when most of Congress is out of town. We’re pretty sure we read it on the internet. Anyway, the wingnuts shit their pants over the cost of decorating one of the most famous buildings in the world during the country's biggest holiday because NOBAMA!!!111!!

Then this sequester nonsense came along and wouldn’t you know it, the wingnuts found something the White House spends money on that they like, and now it has gone away and they has the sadz! We are speaking, of course, about public White House tours, which have become the latest “BENGHAAAAAAZZZZZIIIII!” for the right.

To quickly recap, the tours have been temporarily suspended because of sequestration, which imposed budget cuts across a wide swath of federal government agencies. One of those agencies is the Secret Service, which decided that the officers who normally secure the tours would be needed to cover other security duties now that its agents, like many other government employees, have to take unpaid furlough days.

So did your Aunt Millie lose her job cleaning government office buildings and have to move in with your crazy cousin Deb and the overweight sloths she calls her children? The GOP doesn’t give a shit. But does your Aunt Millie want to go to Washington and tour the White House? Then the GOP is all over it!

Two senators are pushing measures to restart the White House tours as amendments to a "continuing resolution" bill to keep the government funded past March 27. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is reported to have his amendment in the works. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) rolled out a separate amendment on Wednesday night, calling for the transfer of $2.5 million from the Transportation Security Administration to the U.S. Secret Service to pay for the security staff on the tours.

Ha ha, okay, great! Meanwhile Arianna Huffington’s News Aggregator and Mommyblog for Dummies runs down some of the other sequestration cuts that are affecting actual humans. Cuts like the $350,000 sliced from a Georgia program to provide meals and aid to elderly shut-ins, the U.S. Forest Service cutting 500 firefighting jobs just as the summer fire season approaches, and 150 jobs maybe disappearing from a NASA research center in Ohio. Your Wonkette’s dad, an employee of the federal government, will be taking one unpaid furlough day per biweekly pay period, which amounts to a 10% pay cut. But buck up, Dad, you and Mom can maybe still drive up to D.C. and take that tour of the White House like you have been talking about doing since never!

The White House tour cancellation has become such a cause celebre on the right that walking earwig Donald Trump even offered to pay to keep them going. We would suggest that if Trump has a spare $2.5 million lying around, there are some elderly people in Georgia who might like some food instead.

[ HuffPo ]