To nobody's surprise, the new Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives set about breaking the furniture. After their Constitution-reading stunt to open the new session (to which few of them paid attention), they forged ahead on their great crusade to cut the budget. Grab the green eyeshades and sharpen the red pencils! This government costs too much, they cried. We got trouble right here, with a capital T, and that rhymes with B, and that stands for Budget!
And like Harold Hill, the con man in "The Music Man" who inspired that memorable line, the Republican leadership is selling us vaporware. The Republicans care little about cutting the budget: we know this because they danced happily during the George Bush years piling up staggering deficits. I attended a "town meeting" last fall at which 13th District Representative Judy Biggert appeared. After reciting talking points about the spendthrift habits of the Democratic majority, she was asked where she was when enormous tax cuts were passed for the wealthy while spending increased under Bush. She stammered that there was blame all around, thereby avoiding responsibility, and choosing instead to carp about the cost of road construction signs.
Since Biggert won the election we're unlikely to see her again. She prefers to spend her time among banks and insurance companies, not among annoying people who bother her with stories about losing their jobs, their medical insurance, and their homes. The budget must be cut! The banks have told me so!
The Republicans came up for air this week and announced that they want to cut the federal budget by $61 billion in "discretionary spending". This means that fixed-spending programs like Social Security won't be touched, but agencies that annoy the Republicans' corporate patrons (like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Securities and Exchange Commission) will see their budgets slashed.
The timing is no accident. The federal government's budget process requires that a funding act be signed by March 4th. There's not much time to work out a compromise: the Republicans want to play chicken with a government shutdown like they did when Newt Gingrich led them over a cliff.
Meanwhile, China and India are eating our lunch as they build their industry and their infrastructure, and we're wasting time as we watch our industries crumble. "Liberty!" the Republicans cry. Of course, "liberty" to them means the ability to make more money, and if you and your kids get pushed off the road, well, then you got in their way. It could be that when they were robotically reading the Constitution a few weeks ago they skipped over this part:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Maybe Biggert was right. There's nothing in there about road-construction signs.
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