Budget Broo-ha-ha

There is an important editorial in yesterday’s NY Times regarding the House budget plan. The plan (if one can call it that; indeed, even Paul Ryan himself, the Republican chair of the House Budget Committee, referred to it not as a plan but rather “… a cause.”), lays bare the misguided priorities of the current incarnation of the Republican party, especially the new Tea Party members. These newly elected members of Congress have drawn a deep line in the sand and refuse to budge a mere inch from their beloved goals. And let’s please not pretend that those goals are anything other than Grover Norquist’s long held dream of drowning the government in the bathtub (except, of course, for the part where the government gets to control my uterus). An enormous amount of lip service is paid to reining in the deficit and growing the economy – all of which sounds lovely and plays well on talk radio, but is actually horseshit.


The Republicans receive a great deal of flack from those on the left, and many in the center, about their lack of compassion for those less fortunate. In response, the GOP huffs and puffs and takes offense, shouting from the rooftops their favorite myth that tax cuts are the miracle cure for all that ails us, including getting people out of poverty. Tax cuts and spending cuts. Cuts to what you may ask? Not the bloated defense budget that’s for sure. The cuts they salivate over are those to education (Head Start, Pell grants), food stamps, food safety, consumer protection, early childhood care, environmental programs, scientific research – you know, anything that benefits society as a cohesive whole and non-millionaires.

They also mention reforming the tax code in order to simplify it and eliminate many current loopholes. That’s great. We can all get behind that. But what they truly want is to reduce the tax rates on the wealthiest and on corporations. Today’s editorial mentions that if their plan passed, tax revenues would go down by $4.2 trillion. TRILLION. Sure, spending would go down as well, by $4.3 trillion, but that is discretionary spending. It doesn’t take into account the aforementioned defense budget, nor does it take into account that we are involved in two wars.

This bill would lower taxes on the wealthy more “… than even George W. Bush imagined.” How many times does it need to be said? Lowering taxes on the rich does not stimulate the economy. The already wealthy do not spend any money they save on taxes. They do not put it back into the economy. The put it into their already large investment portfolios to make themselves even richer. Trickle-down economics does not work. Full stop. How many times do we need to learn this lesson?

The Democrats are far from blameless. President Obama has let the GOP frame too many issues. He has been far too willing to let them “move the goalpost” further and further to the right, so that when a “compromise” is reached, the so-called center has moved further rightward. And there are just as many Democrats bought and sold by corporate wealth as there are Republicans.

The members of the Tea Party, and the entire GOP for that matter, are not serious about governing. They are serious about power. They are serious about starving the government so that essential services we all rely on disappear. In their fantasy world of “rugged individualism” they seem to forget that someone picks up their trash, paves their roads, lights their safe streets at night, monitors their food so they don’t poison their children, puts out their housefires, delivers their mail, protects the parks they like to visit on vacation and funds research into vaccines and treatments for various diseases that they and their loved ones may contract.

We are all in this together. No matter how much the far-right may hate that, we always will be.