They REALLY Want a Shutdown
Just to punctuate the fact that Republicans really want to shut down the government so they can try to blame the Democrats and have a handy excuse for not accomplishing anything after winning the House, we have the fact that Republicans are lacing the budget with poison pills: take away all federal funding for Planned Parenthood and completely dismantle government regulation of pollution through the EPA, allowing corporations to pollute freely. The abortion riders would defund all family planning at the federal level as well as impact other women’s health programs, and the EPA riders look like a Christmas list for big-time polluters.
This would be like the Democrats attaching riders to rename Reagan Airport and remove any mention of God from U.S. currency. In other words, the GOP knows full well that Democrats–even if they did cave completely on the spending cuts–would still never vote for this bill.
It’s not that the GOP isn’t trying; they are trying–to force a shutdown. The Republicans don’t want the Democrats to agree, and they absolutely want the shutdown to happen.
Even more evidence: the latest emergency resolution to keep government funding going for another week contains $12 billion in spending cuts not germane to the extension, essentially parceling out extra cuts Republicans want in exchange for avoiding a shutdown. Again, a poison pill.
And again, proof that Republicans don’t want to solve anything, they just want every opportunity to say it’s the Democrats’ fault.
We have to create a new adjective: republican. As in, “I can’t believe that he embezzled five million dollars from the charity and then blamed it on that nun. That was so republican.”
Or, a phrasal verb–to “go republican,” as in to “go postal,” e.g.: “Little Jimmy went republican yesterday, taking the ball home in a whining fit so no one could play, and blamed everyone else for it, including the cat. And it wasn’t even his ball.”
Join in. What sentences would best exemplify these new terms?
It’s a useful exercise to ponder — what if the Republicans are right!
This nation is at a turning point. As I post here I do think spending is out of control.
Not counting SS/Medicare, 2007 “Big-Ticket” Spending was:
Defense 652.6
Welfare 179.5
Education 102.0
Transportation 72.9
Protection 41.2
Housing Assistance 39.7
Unemployment 35.1
Agriculture 23.3
2011:
Defense 964.8
Welfare 283.8
Unemployment 134.8
Education 129.8
Transportation 94.5
Housing Assistance 69.4
Protection 60.7
Housing Market Intervention 35.5
Agriculture 32.8
Increases in percentage:
Defense: +48%
Welfare: +58%
Education: +27%
Transportation: +30%
Protection: +47%
Housing: +75%
Unemployment: +284%
Agriculture: +41%
The increase since 2007 in just these categories comes out to $6000 household per year.
Not that the Republicans aren’t full of crap, but I think nobody is really talking sense any more.
I would posit that perhaps a good deal of the spending anomalies we’re seeing are due to the immediate situation and are not necessarily bad–unemployment, for example, or food stamps, these being highly stimulative.
You are correct in that everyone is full of crap–they all want to increase spending in their own districts/states and for their own parties. Look at the list of major cuts the GOP wants, and you’ll see Defense simply isn’t there. Instead we have $2B from job training, $1.6B from the EPA, $1.3B from health centers, $1.1B from the Office of Science, $1B each from NIH and high speed rail–going down the list, you see a lot of environmental, community, transportation, and health. This is not spending cuts, this is–like most everything else the GOP is trying today–an attempt to eviscerate the opposition. Not that the Democrats are much better, but at least they are not quite this lopsided. And when it comes down to it, everyone really wants to increase spending. And they do–they just find ways to talk loudly about how it’s being cut instead.
The other part of the problem is taxation; it is too full of ways people with the most wealth can avoid payment. Without fixing the tax system, spending cuts won’t do the whole job. Unfortunately, this is too much like reforming the electoral college–too many people with disproportionate power who are benefitted by the system have the ability to block the required reform.
I agree in not counting SS/Medicare–I see these as being less of a form of government spending and much more a kind of displacement for personal spending. If everyone had single-payer insurance, it would show up on the federal budget, but would simply replace–at a lower cost–other spending being done were it not in place. Which leaves Defense as the truly bloated section of the budget.
As a foreigner writing from abroad, what puzzles me is that one does not see in the press an adequate response from the democrats to the rupublicans’ demands. It should be easy to discredit taking away all federal funding for Planned Parenthood or completely dismantling government regulation of pollution -in a simple if acerbic language that all Americans would understand except the fanatics. Luis, they need you: you would make piecemeal out of them.