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Republican Math
A secretive Republican Committee tackles Putsch’s catastrophic budget deficits
© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
09/22/05
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/VRWC/GOPmath.htm
You know the Republican Study Committee was working on major budget revisions,
right?
You didn’t? Well, don’t be surprised. Not many people did. Not that the
Republican Study Committee is a dusty little collection of policy wonks from
obscure right wing think tanks. It’s made up of 86 members of the House
Republican caucus (Democrats aren’t allowed to be a part of the budget process,
of course, since under the neofascist right, a 51% majority translates to
absolute rule), and the chairman is Mike Pense, and the Budget & Spending Task
Force Chair is Jeb Hensarling.
They got around to realizing that it was getting a little embarrassing, what
with the GOP for years proclaiming that they were the party of fiscal
responsibility, and it was them who were blowing the federal budget out of the
water in ways that nobody had ever seen before. Worse, eight years of a
Democratic White House had gone a long way toward repairing the damage done by
Reagan and Bush, and the general public had gotten around to noticing that
Democrats did a much better job fiscally than the Republicans could.
So the Republican Study Committee decided that something had to be done about
that. After seeing the government grow by 33% in the past four years and
deficits explode to record levels and nothing but vast amounts of red ink as far
as the eye could see, these 86 party stalwarts actually had enough political
sense to feel slight embarrassment, and more substantial concern that voters
might be annoyed enough to cast more incorrect votes than they could steal.
So their goals were straightforward enough: slash spending to the bone without
raising revenue in any way and without upsetting their beneficiaries, the
well-heeled and the corporations. As for cutting services to the middle class
and the poor, they could be as draconian as they wanted, and they were free to
exercise that famous Republican contempt for anything that seemed intellectual,
such as arts or sciences.
They took as their slogan a mindless crow from one of their sagebrush rebellion
constituents from New Mexico: “Give us a quiet room, copies of the spending
bills, a box of red pencils, and watch what happens.” Then they set to work.
The first thing they went after was the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill, which
could have been a real promising start. The Medicare Prescription Drug Bill is a
real abortion of a policy, one which actually will increase costs for many of
the people it’s supposed to help, and which gives the drug companies the
fantastic right to name their price on drugs. The government is not allowed to
ask for competitive bids, or even contest the prices asked by the companies,
even if they comfortably exceed the retail prices available at the drug stores
which would be handling the “subsidized” drugs. In other words, the bill was a
typical example of GOP graft and corruption, with pennies offered to citizens
(and usually taken back in a sleight of hand) while billions went to major
corporations.
But the committee chickened out. Their goal was to trim a trillion off the
budget over the next ten years, and getting rid of the Medicare Prescription
Drug Bill would have done half of that just by itself. But instead of
recommending that, they wanted it held off for just one year, and one year only,
which would save an estimated $30.8 billion. The first year is the cheapest. I’m
guessing they just didn’t want it to make its effects felt until after the next
election, is all.
The other good thing was to strip the highway bill of $25 billion in “earmarked”
riders. Most of those were just plain pork, like the quarter billion dollar
bridge to nowhere. Yes, there are some worthwhile projects that would get axed,
but mostly the bill was a pork-laden monstrosity.
That’s it for the good stuff. After that, the committee did what Republicans
always do, and turned mean, soaking the poor and the middle class in order to
benefit the rich.
The biggest single “tough choice” they made was to eliminate block grant
Medicaid Acute Services. This is money allocated to the states to cover indigent
patients who show up at the Emergency Rooms. Let ‘em die on the sidewalk. It’s
their fault. They should have taken better care of themselves. Maybe later on
the GOP can offer tax incentives to anyone who racks up more than $100,000 in ER
bills. It will have the advantage of being revenue-neutral!
They also want to increase the allowable co-pays, and while the amounts seem
small ($3 to $5), for someone on welfare or social security, it can make a
substantial difference. But it brought the committee 7% closer to their goal. Or
so they claim. It would save $90 million in the first year, and then it would
sharply increase, it would supposedly save $7,640 million over the next nine
years. The idea is that because it costs more, people won’t bother using the ER
for trivial things like broken arms or chest pains. And that will save money on
medical services provided. Yes, they are serious about that.
They want to raise retirement age for federal employees, eliminate subsidized
loans to graduate students, increase Medicare Premiums (seniors are encouraged
to switch to dry dog food, which costs less and is better for their teeth, if
any), increase the “cost-sharing requirement” (presumably that means anyone
making more than $200 a month will be too rich to qualify for medicare), and
impose a 10% co-pay on those requiring home care.
No where in this is mentioned rescinding the estate tax cuts (which by
themselves would eliminate some $300 billion in debt, and affect only the 1% of
the population most able to afford it). Nor is there any talk about increasing
capital gains to 20%, or making the top bracket of income 40%. Which would be a
painless way to eliminate the deficits altogether.
Nor are military cuts mentioned, other than inane (sell obsolete stuff faster)
or trivial, yet satisfyingly vicious (close the domestic dependent school
system, and restrict first-responder grants to at-risk communities). Never mind
that American taxpayers are dumping half a trillion a year into a military that
has proven itself to be ill-equipped, ill-trained, suffering from poor morale
and possessed of exceptionally poor discipline, if the disgraceful behavior in
Iraq and Gitmo is any indication. Republicans don’t dare ask what became of all
that money that has apparently been thrown away over the years. After all,
defense contractors are among their best supporters.
America already has a reputation for being the chintziest rich bastards in the
world when it comes to foreign aid, and let’s face it, with this administration
it’s not like America is making any friends anyway, so the Committee went after
it in a big way, freezing funds for peacekeeping operations, Global AIDS
Initiatives, the Inter-American Foundation, the African Development Foundation,
USAID, of course, the Peace Corps. They even want to cut funds for the drug war,
but that’s only .3% of the proposed cuts in foreign aid.
At home, they went afer funding for arts, sciences and infrastructure with an
axe, eliminating the NSF Math and Science Program, NASA’s Moon and Mars
programs, grants for energy conservation (with gas approaching $5 a gallon, no
Republican in his right mind wants to hurt profits with conservation programs),
the Energy Star program (which helps consumers pick appliances that don’t rack
up huge electric bills), the Minority Business Development Agency, “Safe and
Drug-Free Schools” grants (OK, those were an utter waste of time and money, but
I thought that was a program for kids that Republicans actually LIKED) and
eliminate fiscal assistance to the DC area. Just because Congress runs it
doesn’t mean they feel any obligation to the people unfortunate enough to live
there!.
They also want to eliminate the one vestige of public campaign funding that
exists, the Presidential Election Campaign fund. If you aren’t a large
corporation or a multi-millionaire, you probably aren’t smart enough to run for
public office, anyway. Look at our president. Now, there’s a boy who’s plenty
smart!
Let’s see: they want to eliminate funding for CPB, the NEH and the NEA, of
course. They hate the arts, they hate TV that isn’t controlled by lunatic
billionaires from Australia or messianic crackpots from Korea. They want to
eliminate the Legal Services Corporation, or what’s left of it, on the grounds
that if the founders wanted the poor to have their day in court, they would have
said something about it in the Constitution.
With the usual antipathy to undeveloped nature, the Committee wants to slash
funding for the BLM, Fish and Wildlife, and the Forest Service. They want to cut
funds to school construction by the BIA – maybe the idea of an educated Native
American scares them. Water Quality funding would be cut, along with the
National Resources Conservation Service, and waste disposal grants. Along with
dozens of other conservation and cultural heritage programs.
They want to cut funding for the federal bureaucracy, which would be laudable,
except they came up with a surprisingly modest goal of $16 billion over ten
years, or roughly the amount the Clinton administration AVERAGED for each of its
eight years. Homeland Security would not be cut, of course. Republicans love
big, useless bureaucracies that benefit nobody, as long as they are
quasi-military and repress people.
The report goes on and on. Mostly it’s devoted to afflicting the afflicted and
comforting the comfortable, which is a Republican dream. You can read all about
it at
Rawstory.
Need proof about the afflicting the afflicted part?
The Committee wants to cut Katrina reconstruction and repair funding by 40%.
Before New Orleans even had a chance to dry out.