Pretty much

Responding to opportunistic challenges about government spending -- surely Katrina and its 10,000 dead mean we must keep the estate tax, withdraw troops from Iraq and exhum Reagan's corpse so we can burn it -- Tom Delay announces that the government is in tip top shape:

Asked if that meant the government was running at peak efficiency, Mr. DeLay said, "Yes, after 11 years of Republican majority we've pared it down pretty good."

In truth, this is pretty much a foul ball. Obviously the question is argumentative, since not even a New York Times reporter believes even a Clinton government runs at top efficiency, so the odds are too high that DeLay was making a joke, and even if he wasn't, it's just not particularly good quality. Although most national political reporting is all about gotcha (has Bush admitted a mistake yet? I don't know; why don't we ask him?), good reporting isn't.

But it's still a ridiculous thing to say.