Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle! This from the AP: Amid the debate over how to fund the hurricane recovery effort along the Gulf Coast, a few lawmakers are suggesting that they forgo their pay raises for a few years… The savings, $14 million over 10 years ...

Oh, wait. We forgot to keep reading… The Internal Revenue Service today announced relief for taxpayers affected by Hurricane Rita. Doh! Still, tax relief in any form is good, even if it takes a catastrophic natural disaster to motivate the government.

Everyone knows gas is expensive. Just driving to McDonalds for a milkshake and some fries isn’t a bargain anymore; but, Americans love their cars and will keep driving no matter what. So what do we do? We look for someone to blame, to point our fingers at, and to curse at while we grudgingly fork-over $50 for a weekly (or daily, as the case may be) fill-up.  But like most things, appearances can be deceiving.

Less than two weeks after proudly declaring that there's "no fat left to trim" in the federal budget, U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay says in an op-ed in this morning's Washington Times that there just may be some wasteful spending after all:

Now that the immediate shock from Hurricane Katrina is wearing off, America faces the impending storm of apathy. Sure we all want to help, and many of us did with a donation or bequest of some kind; but there’s still that pesky $200 billion in hurricane relief that needs paying. For most of us, $200 billion might as well be $200 trillion – it’s just far too large a number to comprehend. So, think of it in terms of per capita expense: that’s roughly $700 out of your budget this year.