“NRO Staff “(Jack Fowler?) over at The Corner posted this gem from our good “friend” Max Baucus:

Baucus said the governors would be “pleasantly surprised” at their minimal burden. “The Medicaid costs, through the expansion, are not going to cost states near as much as feared,” he said.

Well gee, Max, thanks!

This quote embodies is the entire problem with our current government today, especially the Senate. The original purpose of the Senate was to act as a voice – and an advocate – for the respective state governments, and a check on the ability of the House to expand the power (and spending) of the federal government at the expense of the states. Instead, we now have a dysfunctional system wherein a United States Senator, from Montana no less, has the power and the hubris to throw policy mandates at the state governments to advance national partisan political ends and frames his actions as doing the state governments a favor. Senator, your job isn’t to come up with a mandate that isn’t as painful as would otherwise be proposed, your job is to make sure there are no mandates at all.

Instead, we now have DEMOCRACY! and the scope and power (and credit line!) of the federal government has now been growing consistently for pretty much 80+ years. This isn’t what Madison or Jefferson had in mind, is it?

I mean, seriously, it’s wee bit of inaccurate to use George Washington for this poster, but damn if it isn’t spot on:

Some things just get me going and the transformation of the Senate into a supersized version of the House over the past 100 years is one of those things.