Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Clever Republicans

It looks like Boehner is going to call for a vote tomorrow on a one-week budget extension that cuts $12 billion and extends Defense funding for the rest of the year.  It's smart because I imagine it will pass the House and then it puts the Senate or less likely the President in the position of saying "no" to something that results in a shut down.

I don't know what I would do if I were in the Senate's or President's place.  To meet in the middle, cuts should probably include Defense.  After all, Defense is 20% of the budget.

But you can see the clever plan.  With each extension, put in for the rest of the year some item the Republicans want until all you're debating are the ideologically driven cuts.  So then the Democrats finally get the blame for shutting down the government over NPR or Planned Parenthood, which would not go over well.

7 comments:

JohnM said...

Ken, Not entirely sure I follow the comment about debating ideologically drive cuts. If we agree cuts have to be made which ones would you see as not ideologically driven?

Ken Schenck said...

I'm referring to the riders that have no appreciable impact on the deficit (e.g., funding NPR) but seem to be non-negotiables for some.

JRS said...

It's disappointing to see you frame this as "Clever Republicans."

This is an ever worsening financial crisis that democrats do not seem to be taking seriously.

After all the largest cuts under consideration are a relatively small percentage of the budget. We need our elected leaders to quit playing politics with our money and get serious about financial common sense.

Ken Schenck said...

It is not lost on me that fundamental credit for any substantial reduction of the deficit that comes in the next year or so will almost certainly go to the Republicans in Congress and especially the Tea Party Republicans. I welcome the compromises that will come because of their extremism (they will not get what they want, but they will get enough to get us on the right track).

But like you said, the current deadlock focuses on relatively small parts of the budget driven by narrow partisanship (=the riders). I don't know about Ryan's plan, but at least it begins to get at the real problems, as you suggest.

By the way, if we had returned to 2000 tax levels on the upper 2% of Americans, it would have added 70 billion next year, almost double the budget cuts they're wrangling over right now. ;-)

FrGregACCA said...

http://robertreich.org/post/4344201496

Avey said...

Who is the threat of invasion to the USA? It is a defence budget and not a pre-emptive strike budget after all!

Anonymous said...

talk about extremism and ideologically driven -- robert reich is one of the worst.

Cuts have to be made and might as well begin making them in areas like this that aren't essential.

Defense at least is a constitutional power and use for money.

And sooner or later the big three [social security, medicare/medicaid) are going to have to be taken into account