‘A few hundred million dollars’

In this morning’s post on illegal immigration, The Progressive Pulse’s Andrea Verykoukis mentions little ol’ me:

Now before you start cutting and pasting, and attaching really thoughtful comments like “Uh-huh” to my work, let me just add that I don’t believe that it’s wrong to enforce our immigration laws. But I think we need to look at serious systemic reform at the federal level before attacking people and slashing services and locking them up while throwing away the key. Deporting every illegal one finds, generally through racial profiling, will do nothing to stem the flow of people over our borders. Indeed, they generally come right back. Examining what brings them here and why we have use for so many is a better place to start. Then, perhaps dispensing with the tired, ugly invective that most of our non-WASPy immigrant ancestors already fought through, we could look at caring for the families who are here and whose labor we depend on, especially their children.

That thoughtful ‘uh-huh’ was mine. But what can I say, reading such a vigorous defense of government’s right to tax left me, uh, uh, speechless.

But then there’s this from fellow Progressive Pulse blogger Adam Searing:

Healthcare consistently ranks as the first or second issue on people’s minds after Iraq. You would think the General Assembly would be brimming with ideas and solutions. Investment of a few hundred million dollars could fund a deep-discount health insurance plan for small business, guarantee every parent in the state affordable kid coverage, extend basic plans to many childless adults and expand coverage of parents.

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? I’m not questioning the fact that health care is a serious issue in North Carolina. But Searing’s post is yet another example of the way liberal advocates, legislators and the media toss around numbers like ‘a few hundred million dollars’ not only like it’s chump change, but also like it’s never enough. If it’s not health care, it’s schools. If it’s not schools, it’s research parks. If it’s not research parks, it’s open space and farmland. You get the idea.

In the meantime, government keeps getting bigger and taxes keep going up.