The New York TImes editorial board isn’t taking Republican hypocrisy lying down. With the sequester beginning to impact air travel by causing flight delays, John Boehner and Eric Cantor took to Twitter to blame the president.
But drastic cuts in spending carry a heavy price. Republicans certainly don’t want voters they care about — including business travelers and those who can afford to fly on vacation — to feel it. They continue to claim that the $85 billion in this year’s sequester can be covered by eliminating waste, fraud, consultants, and the inevitable grant to some obscure science or art project. And, of course, to programs for the poor.
You don’t see any Republican hashtags blaming the president for cutting housing vouchers to 140,000 low-income families, which has begun. These vouchers are given by cities to families on the brink of homelessness, and about half of them go to families with children.
There aren’t any angry tweets about the 70,000 Head Start slots about to be eliminated, which is forcing some school districts to distribute these valuable services by lottery. Or about the cuts to Vista, which is hurting the program that performs antipoverty work in many states. Or the 11 percent cut in unemployment benefits for millions of jobless workers.
The voiceless people who are the most affected by these cuts can’t afford high-priced lobbyists to get them an exception to the sequester, the way that the agriculture lobby was able to fend off a furlough to meat inspectors, which might have disrupted beef and poultry operations. And what was cut in order to keep those inspectors on the job? About $25 million from a program to provide free school breakfasts.
Wow. So we’re paying for meat inspections with money that was previously appropriated to give poor kids a breakfast before school. That’s a pretty bad choice we had to make there. But it is still better than what the Republicans want to do, which is to take that school breakfast money and give it back to millionaires and billionaires in the form of unpaid taxes.
Jesus God, I know Americans can be pretty stupid, but blaming Obama for not spending money that they haven’t given him? Trying to act like they’re just innocent bystanders in this whole deal? What part of “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives” don’t they understand?
It’s even worse than that. Even if you subscribe to the school of thought that Obama is to blame because he hasn’t completely capitulated to the Republicans’ “we get everything, you get nothing” negotiating stance, the terms of The Sequester make it impossible for the FAA to avoid slashing the fund that pays its employees. All funds must be cut equally. So, they keep saying that the administration could cut different things instead of air-traffic controllers and maintenance crews, but it isn’t true.
Yes, I see what you mean. Pass stupid laws and then criticize the president for following them. It’s the old “Why do you keep hitting yourself” strategy that worked so well on their little brothers when they were 11.
I think this may well wind up being permanent.
We may have finally broken the country.
Nope, not broken. Fixed up very nice indeed. Why this way some of these captains of industry might be able to lay hands on just about every last available penny, as is only their due.
Everybody knows those little moochers, those impoverished little pookies, they all deseve their poverty by their insistence on being born dependent. This culture of dependency is bankrupting our future and takes from the job creators while making them not want to make all the money they’re making because the socialists want a part of their paycheck and somewhat more of their offshored blindtrusts.
PLEASE, MAKE THE STUPID STOP!
YES!!
Good work by the Times except for one big bow to the Beltway’s conventional bullshit: It isn’t “high-priced lobbyists” that persuade them to make exceptions. It’s the bribes (some still quaintly call them campaign contributions) that the lobbyists and their sponsors fork over.
All the points the article makes should be enough to destroy the GOP for once and for all, except for the Dems’ endless need to be genteel and collegial instead of pulling out all the stops. Well, maybe the Times piece will start something moving, finally. Trouble is Everybody That Matters has their hands on this atrocity.
Hypocrisy behind this is clearly observed…
auto repair fort lauderdale fl