Call to arms, Democrats

Whether or not the 2011 budget deal is made [OK, so far it appears it was as I write this on Saturday, April 9, but the full impact of $39 billion in cuts is yet to be fully examined], the process has exposed the Tea Party-led agenda on social policy that targets health, consumer protection, many different aspects of environmental protection, women's health, for-profit colleges, and which also protect many environmentally-damaging practices of energy and agricultural corporations.

If you oppose what the Tea Party and the radicalized GOP are trying to do to this country, KEEP THIS LIST handy and break it out at rallies and pressers and public appearances of Tea Party candidates for election. Ask them point-blank if they support things like cutting funding for the Wetlands Reserve Program and flood prevention. Ask them if why they want to continue allow mercury emissions to the atmosphere, where mercury can enter the food chain, get incorporated in seafood, and thus threaten the neurological development of unborn babies.

Get serious, environmentally-minded independents and Democrats! Now is the time to start planning the defeats of Tea Party candidates and first-term representatives in Congress. Since my district's rep is the estimable Steny Hoyer, I'm targeting the clinically and chronically stupid Andy Harris in the 1st district of Maryland. He lost a close one to Frank Kratochvil when Obama was elected, then won in the GOP comeback. I think he can be taken DOWN.

1:28 PM Friday, April 8: Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said that House Republicans remained intent on defunding Planned Parenthood. "It's about the sanctity of life," he said.


Rider deal-breakers

Partial list of GOP riders on budget bill:
- Prohibits funding for the Biomass Crop Assistance Program.
- Restricts the ability of the FDA to transfer funds.
- Prohibits the Federal Reserve from transferring more than $80 million to the
new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.
- Prohibits funds for a government sponsored “consumer products complaints database.”
- Prohibits funds to take any action to effect or implement the disestablishment,
closure or realignment of the US Joint Forces Command.
- Bans funding for the Department of Education regulations on Gainful Employment,
as-yet-unpublished rules that would restrict federal student aid to for-profit colleges whose students have high debt-to-income ratios and require the schools to report more information about student outcomes.
- Prohibits funding for the Wetlands Reserve Program.
- Prohibits funding for the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act.
- Prohibits funding for the Weatherization Assistance Program or the State Energy Program.
- Prohibits funding for EPA efforts to regulate greenhouse gases.
- Prohibits funds from being used to construct ethanol blender pumps or ethanol storage facilities.
- Prohibits the EPA, Corps of Engineers and the Office of Surface Mining from implementing coordination procedures that have served to extend and delay the review of coal mining permits.
- Prohibits funds for the EPA to deny proposed and active mining permits under Section 404 (c) of the Clean Water Act, specifically to revoke retroactively a permit for the Spruce Mine in West Virginia.
- Prohibits funding for Mom and apple pie.

"Under the House-passed measure, Republicans are pushing limits upon the Environmental Protection Agency to limit its ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, although the U.S. Supreme Court recently charged the Environmental Protection Agency with this responsibility. In addition, the House version of a budget would also block the EPA from issuing or enforcing new regulations on the emission of mercury from cement factories, pollution into the Chesapeake Bay, surface coal mining and runoff into Florida waters.

Other elements of the House-passed bill would stop the administration from issuing new regulations on for-profit private schools, which have been accused of bilking millions of dollars in heavy-interest tuitions and loans, from unsuspecting students for “college degrees” of marginal and often unaccredited value. The House “budget” would also block the Federal Communications Commission from enforcing rules on the Internet that are opposed by Verizon and other Internet service providers, even though these rules are highly regarded as consumer-friendly."

From the New York Times:

If the federal government shuts down at midnight on Friday — which seems likely unless negotiations take a sudden turn toward rationality — it will not be because of disagreements over spending. It will be because Republicans are refusing to budge on these ideological demands:

• No federal financing for Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions. Instead, state administration of federal family planning funds, which means that Republican governors and legislatures will not spend them.

• No local financing for abortion services in the District of Columbia.

• No foreign aid to countries that might use the money for abortion or family planning. And no aid to the United Nations Population Fund, which supports family-planning services.

• No regulation of greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency.

• No funds for health care reform or the new consumer protection bureau established in the wake of the financial collapse.

Abortion. Environmental protection. Health care. Nothing to do with jobs or the economy; instead, all the hoary greatest hits of the Republican Party, only this time it has the power to wreak national havoc: furloughing 800,000 federal workers, suspending paychecks for soldiers and punishing millions of Americans who will have to wait for tax refunds, Social Security applications, small-business loans, and even most city services in Washington. The damage to
a brittle economy will be substantial.

Read the rest.

But it finishes like this:

The public is not going to be fooled once it sees what the Republicans, pushed by Tea Party members, were really holding out for. There are a few hours left to stop this dangerous game, and for the Republicans to start doing their job, which, if they’ve forgotten, is to serve the American people.