US Senate Privatizes Its Failing Restaurants

US Senate Privatizes Its Failing Restaurants

RUSH: I'm going to read you a little passage here, ladies and gentlemen, a little quote from one of our heroes, Ronald Reagan, whom our own side is telling us to get over. He said: "We should always remember that our strength still lies in our faith in the good sense of the American people. And that the climate in Washington is still opposed to those enduring values, those 'permanent things' that we've always believed in. ... But Washington is a place of fads and one-week stories. It's also a company town, and the company's name is government, big government. ... In the discussion of federal spending, the time has come to put to rest the sob sister attempts to portray our desire to get government spending under control as a hard-hearted attack on the poor people of America."

To this day, we have a federal budget over $3 trillion. Any mention of cutting it is still said to be aimed at the poor, minorities and women, hardest-hit. We don't change anything in Washington unless a Reagan comes along. Obama isn't going to change anything. Obama is going to do what leftists and liberals have done for eons, and that's to try to grow the government to as large as it can, raise taxes on as many people as possible, and eliminate as much personal freedom and liberty as he can. There's nothing new about Obama. Reagan was change. "The climate in Washington is still opposed to those enduring values, those 'permanent things' that we've always believed in. ...

"But Washington is a place of fads and one-week stories." Does that not describe Barack Obama? We have all of these examples, countless examples of government failing in every mission it takes, be it fixing and restoring and maintaining levees in New Orleans, to reducing poverty, to streamlining healthcare. There is no evidence that government is fit to run it. In fact, the Senate dining room, wait until you hear this. Dianne Feinstein has ordered the Senate dining room to go private. It's losing money. It loses millions. The food's lousy and if they don't go private, Senator's lunch prices will go up 25%. The House already did it.

Here's the sad story, ladies and gentlemen, and this is in the Washington Post today: "Year after year, decade upon decade, the US Senate's network of restaurants has lost staggering amounts of money -- more than $18 million since 1993, according to one report, and an estimated $2 million this year alone, according to another." We're talking about Senate restaurants. "The financial condition of the world's most exclusive dining hall and its affiliated Capitol Hill restaurants, cafeterias and coffee shops has become so dire that, without a $250,000 subsidy from taxpayers, the Senate won't make payroll next month." Now, keep in mind, this is who we are told is best suited to manage our energy policy, to manage our healthcare. They screw up every major thing they try because they are not the best qualified.

"The embarrassment of the Senate food service struggling like some neighborhood pizza joint has quietly sparked change previously unthinkable for Democrats. Last week, in a late-night voice vote, the Senate agreed to privatize the operation of its food service, a decision that would, for the first time, put it under the control of a contractor and all but guarantee lower wages and benefits for the outfit's new hires. The House is expected to agree -- its food service operation has been in private hands since the 1980s -- and President Bush's signature on the bill would officially end a seven-month Democratic feud and more than four decades of taxpayer bailouts," for Senators to dine. "Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Rules and Administrations Committee, which oversees the operation of the Senate, said she had no choice. 'It's cratering,' she said of the restaurant system. 'Candidly, I don't think the taxpayers should be subsidizing something that doesn't need to be. There are parts of government that can be run like a business and should be run like businesses.'" So they're going to privatize it.

"In a letter to colleagues, Feinstein said that the Government Accountability Office found that 'financially breaking even has not been the objective of the current management due to an expectation that the restaurants will operate at a deficit annually.'" Oh yeah, just like the federal government does. "But Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), speaking for the group of senators who opposed privatizing the restaurants, said that 'you cannot stand on the Senate floor and condemn the privatization of workers, and then turn around and privatize the workers here in the Senate and leave them out on their own.'"

You know, he's got a point. The Democrats are being a little inconsistent here. They argue against the privatization of anything in government that would make it run better, but now all of a sudden in the Senate dining room, a different story. You know what one of the key factors here is? Senate opposition to privatization melted when faced with this choice. "Feinstein made another presentation May 7, warning senators that if they did not agree to turn over the operation to a private contractor, prices would be increased 25 percent across the board."

These are the people that you are being told can best administer your healthcare? They can't even run their own restaurants at a profit and we have been paying for these people to eat? Do you know how many millionaires there are in the United States Senate, particularly on the Democrat side? Do you know how many? It's an astounding number. I know there are some businesses that are so large that they have cafeterias and restaurants for their employees. I, frankly, in my life, have never worked at a place that paid for any meal of mine unless I was on business somewhere. But I have never, ever, worked at a place that bought my meals. I take it back. I want to be factually correct.

When I worked at the Kansas City Royals during home games, the employees, certain of them, ate in the press room with the press because we were working. But when the season was over or when the team was on the road, they did not open that room and feed us. We got to go to the stadium club, but we paid for it. These people have been running their restaurant at a loss because it was just expected to run at a loss and we were going to pay for it, and these are the people that want to run your healthcare.