March 11, 2023

Fox News' Outnumbered program ran a lengthy segment attacking President Biden's new budget which turned bizarre when co-host Emily Campagno said cutting shrimps on treadmills would balance the budget.

The constant refrain from all Republicans is you must always cut federal spending. Cut cut cut. That's always their solution.

Earlier in the segment Jason Chaffetz whined that Biden should actually increase military spending. Emily Campagno then went into a word salad tirade against cutting the deficit which was hard to actually understand.

Lone wolf Democrat Marie Harf appeared to ignore Campagno's fiscal responsibility rant and went back to Chaffetz.

"What do you cut, Jason? If you're in Congress what would you cut?" Harf asked.

Fox News contributor Emily Campagno had to jump in.

"Shrimps on treadmills, most of the federal grants..."

"That doesn't balance the budget," Harf pointed out. "Big ticket items."

Chaffetz was in a real bind here. As usual he was all hat, no cattle.

"There is a real answer and 73% of the budget is problematic spending, " he said. "Medicaid, medicare, Social Security, but hundreds of other programs, Congress never touches."

Chaffetz was in Congress why didn't he touch those programs he loathes so much?

After almost vomiting saying cutting spending doesn't mean you'll get rid of Social Security, and other social safety nets. What he means is raising the retirement age which is a huge cut.

"You have to strengthen those and fix those, but the other thing is both parties have failed. "You have to cut spending."

How do you fix our social safety nets by simply cutting spending? Who knows. That's like saying let's cut the "woke" out of Medicare.

Kaleigh McEnany jumped in and as usual lied about Rick Scott's Social Security proposal that was even panned by Mitch McConnell and claimed he never wanted to cut social security.

Campagno finally said what was really on her mind.

"Raise the eligibility age and get rid of fraud," she said.

Campagno decided cutting all federal research grants to balance the budget is a feckless and dumb since the amount of money is so small compared to the entirety of the federal budget and Harf ignored her.

If you were wondering where "shrimps on treadmills" came from?

It was part of a research project to understand how disease is affecting marine organisms from an article: Don’t let the war on science stop valuable yet silly-seeming research, like shrimps on treadmills

David: I put a shrimp on a treadmill as part of a large study to understand how disease is affecting marine organisms. The work was completely misrepresented as wasting millions of taxpayer dollars when in fact I built the treadmill for $47, paid for myself. The shrimp were not put on a treadmill to exercise but to measure how bacteria was affecting their biology. The treadmill was only a very small part of a much larger project to better understand commercially important species and possible implications to human health.

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