The Squeeze is on

August has not been good to Republicans. Poll numbers are lower than dirt, protestors are dogging Bush like fleas on an old dog and that flushing sound you hear is Iraq’s Constitution being trashed by sectarian fighting. Iran, however, loves the fact that another Islamic state is being born.
So what do you suppose Congress will be up to upon their return from summer vacations? How about this for starters:

Critical Votes Loom For Hill Republicans
Party to Set Cuts to Entitlement Spending

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 28, 2005; A04

Lawmakers are drafting proposals that would cut billions of dollars from the growth of Medicaid, slice into student loans just as students return to college, pare back food stamps and trim farm price supports in the midst of a midwestern drought.

[emphasis mine]
Sigh… here we go again.

How bad will it be this time?

The raft of bills, due out of 16 committees in the House and Senate by Sept. 16, will present the Republican Party its toughest test of fiscal austerity in nearly a decade. For years, the party has embraced the rhetoric of small government while overseeing legislation that has helped boost federal spending by more than a third since the GOP took control of Congress 10 years ago. Now, Republican lawmakers will be faced with the tough votes needed to slow that growth and enact the first cuts in entitlement spending since 1997.

The impact of the bills will be broad:

· The energy committees will produce legislation to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling to secure $2.4 billion in royalties and other payments.

· The Senate Finance Committee is trying to find as much as $10 billion in savings from Medicaid, trimming anticipated growth by as much as 13 percent at a time when states such as Tennessee and Missouri are throwing tens of thousands of people off their Medicaid rosters.

· The Senate agriculture committee will try to trim farm price supports by $2.4 billion through 2010 while cutting an additional $600 million from food stamps.

· Senate aides are crafting legislation to cut $7 billion from the federal student loan program.

· The House and Senate education and labor committees are expected to draft legislation to raise the premiums corporations pay to the troubled Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. from $16 to $31 per worker, a move that would improve the government’s balance sheet by $6.5 billion.

The bills are mandated by a budget resolution that passed this spring, after acrimonious debate. The budget blueprint mandated $35 billion in entitlement savings over five years, along with $70 billion in tax cuts over that period. By parliamentary rules, the resolution ensures that both the spending and tax cut packages cannot be filibustered, and thus can pass the Senate with a simple majority of 51 votes.

[emphasis mine]

Sounds like it’s about as bad as it gets. What are we going to do about this disgusting bald faced grab of our tax revenues to be distributed among the wealthy and the corporate thieves? Do we have to light a fire under our Democratic leaders? Maybe, just maybe, they will light those fires themselves.
“It’s been off the radar screen, but I can assure you it will be front and center very soon,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).“
[….]
“Democrats intend to make the Republicans squirm, especially since the sixth tax cut in five years will be moving simultaneously.”
[….]

“These [spending] cuts are deeply misguided and are only needed to make a partial down payment on the deep tax cuts coming,” said Thomas S. Kahn, Democratic staff director of the House Budget Committee.“

We need to tie all the pain these cuts will cause to tax cuts for the wealthy and Corporate give-aways. Their bad behavior is causing real pain to good people, as well as doing damage to our social structure, so let’s hold Republicans’ feet to the fire on this until they scream in political pain.
WaPost article via Buzzflash.com.
crossposted at Dkos