They are also hypocrites. I could use some choice adjectives, but I won't. I want this to be a focused rant.
The subject of the rant is the budget and the budget bill. The GOP has gotten a majority in the House, and they interpreted 52% of the country (predominantly in the GOP-skewed flyover country) as a "mandate". I'd be SERIOUSLY interested in the exact numbers of people that voted for a Republican House rep and how many voted for a Democrat House rep. I think those numbers would surprise some people. (Found it: 45,088,67 voted GOP (51.6%) to 39,107,430 (44.8%). So like I said, 52% is not a mandate, it's just a majority.
But they have sniffed power, and they're high on it. And they're radically motivated to change things. Despite the overriding issue being the economy and jobs, they've decided that they have to cut the budget. And they aren't cutting the budget in a way that would address the problem, they are playing the wool-over-the-eyes shell game known as cutting the discretionary spending part of the budget.
And they aren't only cutting this part, they're slashing, burning, and mutilating it.
What they've decided, as high on power as Charlie Sheen is on coke, booze, and sex, is that they can cut what they don't like. And they can make those cuts stick.
Robert Reich has a couple of editorials on the Huffington Post that support what I'm saying.
The Republican Shakedown
And if America had higher marginal tax rates and more tax brackets at the top -- for those raking in $1 million, $5 million, $15 million a year -- the budget would look even better. We wouldn't be firing teachers or slashing Medicaid or hurting the most vulnerable members of our society. We wouldn't be in a tizzy over Social Security. We'd slow the rise in health care costs but we wouldn't cut Medicare. We'd cut defense spending and lop off subsidies to giant agribusinesses but we wouldn't view the government as our national nemesis.
The Coming Shutdowns and Showdowns: What's Really At Stake
Nationally, you remember, Republicans demanded and received an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich. They've made it clear they're intent on extending them for the next ten years, at a cost of $900 billion. They've also led the way on cutting the estate tax, and on protecting Wall Street private equity and hedge-fund managers whose earnings are taxed at the capital gains rate of 15 percent. And the last thing they'd tolerate is an increase in the top marginal tax rate on the super-rich.He also said:
Meanwhile, of course, more and more of the nation's income and wealth has been concentrating at the top. In the late 1970s, the top 1 percent got 9 percent of total income. Now it gets more than 20 percent.So the problem isn't that "we've" been spending too much. It's that most Americans have been getting a steadily smaller share of the nation's total income.
So let's look at this problem another way.
Anyone with a modicum of higher intelligence (excluding Star Parker, perhaps) can see that the problem with the budget is not with the 15% or so that is called "discretionary spending", it's with the other 85% that doesn't have a great name, but which could be termed "necessary obligations". It means, primarily, defense spending -- which the GOP has tentatively made a few small steps toward cutting some of the truly unnecessary stuff, like a jet engine even the DoD doesn't want -- and then the kahunas, Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the debt. Well, we can't do much about interest on the debt, but we can do something about the other two.
The debt commission, to its considerable credit, took the step of cutting into the third rail (SS and Medicare) as one of the steps that could/should be taken to address the nation's gigundo deficit problem. Small steps like raising the age when recipients could start to collect Social Security. People are living longer and working longer -- this seems like a reasonable step to take.
But Obama didn't do it in the 2012 budget, and the GOP and rabidal right pundits attacked him for not doing something realistic and meaningful about the budget. Why, should he, for whom deficit reduction was not a political issue that put him into office, commit political seppuku by proposing cuts to SS and Medicare? He knows that if he did, he'd get attacked for doing so. The commission provided some cover, but its recommendations weren't passed.
So it's up to the Tea Party GOP to take that step. To say, "look, we got elected to do something meaningful about the deficit. We trust our constituents. So we will do this politically risky thing and propose reasonable cuts to SS and Medicare, and maybe some DoD programs too."
Is that what they did?
HA. Fat chance!!
What they did, of course, is to carve major and unreasonable (as the Democrats have noted) chunks out of the discretionary spending section. Things that will cost jobs -- as two different analyses have noted. Things that will reduce our future competitiveness; investments in education in science and engineering. Things like climate science. (OK, we absolutely know they
don't like climate science. But there should still be investment in what COULD happen. It's called insurance. Everybody has health insurance because eventually most people get sick or hurt or have a cavity. Even if sea level rise ends up not being as much as it might be because of climate change, it makes sense to address coastal erosion and subsidence, because they are still going to be Pacific storms, nor'easters, and hurricanes.
So cutting discretionary spending, which is the big issue that will likely still push Congress to a shutdown showcase, should not be where the major attacks on the deficit take place. And to show that, I'm going to describe a thought experiment.
Let's consider a family that has a net income of $50K. Doesn't matter how many kids or cars or pets they have, the fact is that they break even or save a little on $50K. They also have a balloon mortgage.
So here's what happens to this family. Their mortgage payment, which had been $1000 a month ($12,000 a year, or half their net income, roughly) hits the balloon point and goes up to $3000 a month. [This has happened.]
So now they aren't breaking even. Their total annual mortgage outlay went from $12,000 a year to $36,000 a year. Put another way, the difference: $24,000 a year -- is their projected annual deficit. And it's BIG. It's almost half of their net income.
So, to address this issue, they decide to cut their discretionary spending. They stop having their weekly latte when they go grocery shopping. Net: $32 a month, $384 a year. They cut their actual grocery budget from $600 a month to $400 a month (saves $2400 a year) by using coupons and buying store brands instead of name brands. They cancel their annual vacation trip to a cabin by a mountain lake: $4500 saved. They reduce their clothing purchases by $1000 a year. They cancel their membership at the health club (which the doctor had recommended because like most Americans, they were a tad overweight). They'll replace that with brisk walks around the block. They saved another $1500 right there.
0384
2400
4500
1000
1500
-----
9784.
Only about $14,000 more to go!
Now, let's be serious with the family. The only real way that they'd have a chance to stay close to solvent if this happened would be to either try to sell the house and move into one with a smaller mortgage (very unlikely to work unless they could get a foreclosure property) or to refinance. That would address the big issue.
Now rich Star Parker doesn't get this. She sees a big number, like a family's total net income, and says it's easy to cut a little bit out of the discretionary spending. What she doesn't address is that, somewhat like the US Government, a large part of a family budget is not discretionary, unless you consider eating and sleeping in a warm house optional. Furthemore, Star's cut was just the equivalent of the House GOP's opening salvo -- the massive cuts to useful programs -- NOT the real deal about actually getting the domestic or nation's financial house in order.
So, to sum up: what the House GOP is doing is a massive game of chicken, supported by hubris and utterly crass politics. If they want any respect from this side of the political spectrum, they'd be honest and propose real solutions to the problem, like the debt commission did.
HA! Fat chance!
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