December 28, 2012 09:12 PM UTC

Cut Grandma Before Guns, Says Lamborn With Glee

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• by: Colorado Pols

A classic conflict illustrated in an otherwise genuflective interview of Rep. Doug Lamborn, last night on Colorado Springs’ KRDO-TV News as he shuffles back to Washington:

One thing that is unwavering about Lamborn though is his dedication to fiscal responsibility. When he looks at the economic situation ahead he sees a reduction in federal spending.

“I’m not interested in raising taxes,” said Lamborn, referring to President Barack Obama’s plan for avoiding major holes in the budget beginning in January. “Our country needs more than anything to cut spending and to live within our means.”

…Medicare is a good place to look for savings, according to Lamborn, because on it’s on the path to bankruptcy.

“In 12 years or so Medicare is going to go broke so we have to do something,” said Lamborn. “It can not continue as it is.”

One major area of concern for Lamborn is military spending.

“It’s true that Colorado Springs will be greatly impacted by cuts in defense spending but I’m most concerned about our national defense,” said Lamborn.

As the representative of Colorado’s biggest lavishly taxpayer-funded military installations, nonetheless representing a stridently “small government” conservative electorate, Lamborn is forced to serve two radically opposed masters–who simply don’t get the contradiction. Surely, as even Lamborn’s Republican colleague Rep. Mike Coffman has said, there is some room for savings in the Department of Defense’s $707 billion (and that’s before all the extras) budget?

We suppose it would be different if the polls didn’t overwhelmingly show opposition to Lamborn’s desired choice to cut Medicare (it’s true we haven’t seen a CD-5 breakout of that polling). But he vividly illustrates the hypocrisy of some government spending, in this case defense spending with its long and storied history of profligate waste, being sacrosanct–while other spending, in this case health care for old people, is “a good place to look for savings.”

We can’t tell you exactly how it gets rationalized down along the Ronald Reagan Highway, but for anyone not able to manage this feat of intellectual pirouette, it really doesn’t look good.