Is Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning the only sane person left in Washington? The Hall of Fame pitcher turned Senator held up a $10 billion spending bill all by himself for 5 days and drew the ire of both Democrats and Republicans, not to mention most of the Media.

But why? Sure it was a popular bill because it included extensions for unemployment benefits that a lot of Americans need. But he wasn’t saying he didn’t want the bill to pass, he just wanted the Senate to find a way to pay for the new spending with cuts somewhere else in the $3.5 trillion budget.

What a concept: Figure out how to pay for something, BEFORE you spend it. Sound familiar? Its because last month, President Obama made much fanfare when he signed an executive order requiring “pay-as-you-go” budgeting. “Now, Congress will have to pay for what it spends, just like everybody else,” Obama said, only three weeks ago. But instead of backing Bunning’s demand that new spending must be paid for, the White House is attacking him just like everyone else.

I guess the “grouchy” Bunning still has a knack for throwing brush-off pitches, because his one-man stand to hold up this bill was a deliberate high-and-inside pitch to expose Pay-Go as a fraud.

Apparently, when Democrats want to spend money badly enough on something, they will just waive the new Pay-Go rule by declaring it an “emergency”. Foolishness.

Now that Bunning relented in exchange for a vote on actual proposals to pay for the $10 billion, which he lost, I guess the Senate will go back to business as usual and keep adding to the $1.6 trillion deficit.

I applaud Bunning for standing up for taxpayers, it’s just too bad almost everyone else is booing him? You just got to like a guy that is not afraid to voice his opinion, no matter how unpopular, like last fall when Bunning called the financial bailout bill a “crap sandwich.”

I am also basically a big fan of anyone taking a stand, and saying “I object!”, to just about anything. Because if no one objects, how will we anyone question if it is the right thing to do? It’s like an old friend, used to say: “Only dead fish go with the flow.”