Bush II; Day 497: We don't need no stinkin' blanaced budget

True conservatives who support this current rendition of the Republican Party must walk around with their heads bowed in shame. The lack of fiscal responsiblity or, to be frank, rationality, is somewhat astonishing.

First the Republicans (well, most Republicans) voted down legislation that would have put back in place the "pay as you go" concept for budgeting. They're not even very secretive about their reason. They want Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy to stay in place forever, and it is basically impossible to balance our budget without ending those tax cuts.

No, wait. Not impossible. There is a way. Yes, you guessed it. Massive spending cuts on programs that help the weakest amongst us. As the Washington Post points out, there is one group of Republicans who are being honest about it and produced an alternative budget that shows what exactly it would take to actually live up to the Bush Administration claims about getting our deficits down.

Bottom line:

Balance could be achieved by 2011, it shows, but only if Americans are willing to sacrifice a good chunk of their health care, education, energy, transportation and foreign aid -- in fact, pretty much all of the federal budget outside defense and veterans.

What would go? Extra unemployment benefits and training to workers who lose their jobs as a result of foreign competition, heating assistance for low-income families, family planning funds, subsidized loans for graduate students and, after 2009, funding for the federal highway program. Also, Amtrak, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Agency for International Development and President Bush's Millennium Challenge Account. Substantially reduced would be funding for low-income schools, United Nations peacekeeping forces, the National Institutes of Health and block grants to states to pay for preventive health care for mothers and children. Head Start would be frozen at 2005 levels.

Average enrollment growth in Medicaid, which provides health care to poor people, was more than 7 percent annually between 2000 and 2004, and medical inflation itself is about 5 percent. Yet this budget would limit the growth in federal spending on Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which provides health care to uninsured children just above the poverty line, to 4 percent per year. The result? More poor people, and more poor children in particular, would go without care.

[snip]

These budget cuts would be shortsighted and mean-spirited; they would transform the role of the federal government. We find much of this unthinkable, and we believe most Americans would, too. That's why Mr. Bush doesn't talk about the real-life consequences of his tax cuts, and the real-life people who will suffer from them after he leaves office. So we thank the Republican Study Committee for producing this document. If this is what you want government to look like, go ahead and support the extension of the president's tax cuts and oppose any tax increases.

Let's not forget that this really is what a big faction of the Republican Party actually wants. But they'e not usually up front about it because they know what the polls say: it's not what people actually want. So, you gotta just keep on connecting the dots for people...make sure they know what and who they are really voting for when they vote Republican.

Posted by elisa at March 20, 2006 07:53 AM | Jobs/Economy/Taxes