Category Archives: Tea Party

These are the questions I’m asking myself…

From the Washington Post:

In Washington, we’re getting closer and closer to a government shutdown. There’s now talk of a continuing resolution to push the deadline back by a couple of weeks, but Republicans will only accept it if it includes many of the cuts they’re asking for in their full spending bill. A shutdown isn’t a sure thing yet, but many who were dismissing the idea of it a month ago are taking it seriously today.

Republicans and Democrats, it seems, govern rather differently. Republicans are proving themselves willing to do what liberals long wanted the Obama administration to do: Play hardball. Refuse compromise. Risk severe consequences that they’ll attempt to blame on their opponent. The Obama administration’s answer to this was always that it was important to be seen as the reasonable actor in the drama, to occupy some space known as the middle, and to avoid, so much as possible, the appearance of dramatic overreach. This is as close as we’re likely to come to a test of that theory. In two cases, Republicans have chosen a hardline and are refusing significant compromise, even at the risk of terrible consequences. Will the public turn on them for overreach? Applaud their strength and conviction? Or not really care one way or the other, at least by the time the next election rolls around?

via Ezra Klein – Wonkbook: Are Republicans overreaching? Or just negotiating effectively?.

Great- and unfortunately very accurate- editorial from The Washington Post:

Thanks to the Tea Party, we are now told that all our problems will be solved by cutting government programs. Thus the House Republicans’ budget bill passed Saturday. They foresee nirvana if we simply reduce our spending on Head Start, Pell grants for college access, teen pregnancy prevention, clean-water programs, K-12 education and a host of other areas.

Does anyone really think that cutting such programs will create jobs or help Americans get ahead? But give the Tea Party guys credit: They have seized the political and media agenda and made budget cutting as fashionable as Justin Bieber was five minutes ago.

More striking is the Tea Party’s influence on Washington’s political elite, which looks down at the more extreme men and women of the right when they appear on Fox News but ends up carrying their water.

Lori Montgomery reported in The Post last week that a bipartisan group of senators thinks a sensible deficit reduction package would involve lifting the Social Security retirement age to 69 and reforming taxes, purportedly to raise revenue, in a way that would cut the top income tax rate for the wealthy from 35 percent to 29 percent.

Only a body dominated by millionaires could define “shared sacrifice” as telling nurses’ aides and coal miners they have to work until age 69 while sharply cutting tax rates on wealthy people. I see why conservative Republicans like this. I honestly don’t get why Democrats – “the party of the people,” I’ve heard – would come near such an idea.

More:  E.J. Dionne Jr. – The Tea Party is winning.

Great editorial in the NY Times….

Here are a couple of lengthy excerpts and a link to the full article.  It’s worth reading in it’s entirety…

Are there any adults in charge of the House? Watching this week’s frenzied slash-and-burn budget contest, we had to conclude the answer to that is no.

First Speaker John Boehner’s Republican leadership proposed cutting the rest of the 2011 budget by $32 billion. But that wasn’t enough for his fanatical freshmen, who demanded that it be cut by $61 billion, destroying vital government programs with gleeful abandon.

Even that wasn’t enough for leaders of the hard-line Republican Study Committee, which represents two-thirds of House Republicans. They proposed cutting another $20 billion, for a ludicrous total of $81 billion, all out of the next seven months of government operations.

Now some members want to go still further. On Tuesday, the House began debating the list of proposed cuts, and more than 500 amendments were filed, mostly from Republicans trying to cut still more out of — or end — programs they dislike. One would stop paying dues to the United Nations. Others would cut all financing for the health care reform law, or Planned Parenthood, or any foreign aid to a country that regularly disagrees with the United States at the United Nations.

If the Republicans got their way, it would wreak havoc on Americans’ lives and national security. This blood sport also has nothing to do with the programs that are driving up the long-term deficit: Medicare, Medicaid and, to a lesser extent, Social Security.

When he presented his 2012 budget on Monday, President Obama avoided those difficult issues. On Tuesday, he tried to bring a little adult supervision to the budget debate by offering to begin discussing with Republican leaders ways to solve those big-ticket problems. Senate Republican leaders and the House budget chairman, Paul Ryan, have indicated a willingness to discuss entitlements. (Given the political volatility of these issues, the talks need to be behind closed doors.)

Mr. Boehner could show leadership, and bring some sense back to the House, by reminding his members that entitlements are where the big money lies. Instead, he has endorsed the race to remove $100 billion from nonsecurity discretionary spending for the rest of 2011.

Asked on Tuesday if he was concerned that the proposed cuts could lead to tens of thousands of new layoffs, he said he was not. “Over the last two years, since President Obama has taken office, the federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs,” he said. “And if some of those jobs are lost in this, so be it.”

His figure of 200,000 new federal workers appears to be more than three times higher than reality. Several credible economists have said that an $81 billion cut could result in up to 800,000 layoffs throughout the American economy.

AND

In all of their posturing, Republican lawmakers have studiously avoided making clear to voters what vital government services would be slashed or disappear if they got their way — like investment in cancer research or a sharp reduction in federal meat inspections, or the number of police on the street, or agents that keep the borders secure, or the number of teachers in your kids’ schools.

Those cuts will never get past the Senate, and, on Tuesday, Mr. Obama said he would veto such job-killing cuts if they arrive at his desk. That puts the House leadership on notice. Will they follow the mob and allow the government to shut down if the cuts are not enacted? Or will they take back control of the House and steer it toward reality?

via Out of Control in the House – NYTimes.com.