With deficits rising out of sight and more Americans out of work than any time in the last several decades, one might think that Congress would take a sober and skeptical look at any unnecessary spending.  Okay, okay, you got me — I didn’t write that with a straight face.  But even I was surprised to find Democrats pushing to spend almost a billion dollars on a program to provide a new welfare program to …. horses?

Yup (via Power Line):

[Today], House Democrats plan to hold a vote on the “Restore Our American Mustangs Act” (H.R.1018), which would create a new $700 million welfare program for wild horses.  This floor action comes at a time when unemployment has soared to 9.5 percent, a 26-year high, and the federal deficit has grown to a historic $1 trillion.

“There are serious issues facing our country right now and it’s absurd that Democrat leaders believe that spending $700 million to pamper wild horses is the best use of our time and Americans’ tax dollars,” said Ranking Member Hastings. “Instead of restoring American mustangs, let’s restore American jobs and put the horsepower back into our economy.”

Here’s what HR1018 proposes to do with the $700 million:

• Conducts a horse census every two years
• Provides “enhanced contraception” and birth control for horses
• Establishes an additional 19 million acres of public and private land  for wild horses
• Covers $5 million tab to repair horse damage to land
• Mandates that government bureaucrats perform home inspections before Americans can adopt horses

Birth control … for horses.  How exactly does that restore the mustang population?  If it needs “restoring”, doesn’t that suggest that we need to encourage reproduction rather than launching a mustang safe-sex program?  Of course, mustang rubbers would make each successive “horse census” easier, assuming mustangs can figure out how to wear them.

And what exactly does a government inspection of a home for “adopting” a mustang mean?  It sounds like a back-door way for the federal government to interfere with horse sales, or at best a wildly stupid idea about the role of the federal government in relation to American homes and pet adoption.  Note that the federal government does not do home inspections for human adoption; those get handled by state governments.

Of course, it’s the third point that really means anything at all.  It’s a land grab.  Congress wants to condemn another 19 million acres of land for their own control, and they’re using the mustangs as an excuse.  It’s transparent, and transparently stupid in the middle of this economic crisis.  Democrats need to quit laying money on the horses — and while they’re at it, quit betting with House money on socialist schemes.

Update: For those who think that the government has become a joke … well, you may be right.