I have still not gotten over my snarky response to what the GOP tea partiers call sound fiscal policy. So instead of my writing a long piece, I'll refer you to another one that makes the key points--Jim Maule's "Spending Cuts, Full Disclosures, Hearts, and Voices (Feb. 23, 2011). You can skip most of his links to his earlier posts and go down to the bottom, where he bullet points key cuts passed by the GOP House (based on the Center on Budget and POlicy Priorities report on same). These include reductions to primary and secondary education, Pell Grants to help lower-income students attend college, community mental health and substance abu8se programs, nutritional programs, low-income and public housing support, Native American programs, programs dealing with infectious diseases, programs dealing with food safety, programs dealing with health, programs dealing with clean water (including drinking water), removing pollutants from Florida's streams and the Chesapeake Bay and getting rid of detrimental dams on Oregon's beautiful Klamath River. But the House took specific action to be sure that mining companies can continue to dump mountains into streams even when it results in water pollution.
This budget has nothing to do with fiscal soundness. The deficit created by the tax cuts to the rich that the GOPers insisted was for a lot more money than the few dollars we currently devote to these critical activities, and they didn't blink. They are just using the public's lack of understanding about the country's fiscal situation as an excuse to mount an assault on every program that the oligarchy doesn't like.
The country this budget (if it were passed) would create is a horror story--one world for the privileged and quite another for those who do not have enough, a return to the quasi-serfdom that existed in the Triangle Shirt Factory days, with sewage in streams and the air colored black with pollutants. These GOPers want to return us to the "happy days" of pre-New Deal, pre-Teddy Roosevelt, pre-unions. Back when robber barons did whatever they wanted, and everybody else had to be grateful if they got thrown a scrap along the way or paid, in fact, for the work they were hired to do.
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