Probably the biggest problem facing the country right now is the nature of the Republican Party. More than anything, the problem is their dishonesty. Dishonesty is associated with politicians of all stripes and parties, but people really need to start looking more closely at the difference between the kinds of lies that Democrats tend to tell and the lies you hear from Republicans.
It’s obvious that the Republicans made big gains in the recent midterm elections by campaigning on reducing the size of the federal government and the federal deficit. So, they have at least some kind of mandate to impose cuts on spending on the president. A common theme during the campaign was that the Republicans would reduce $100 billion from next year’s budget. A lot of candidates used that number and it was included in their Pledge to America manifesto. However, once they won the elections and took over the House they quickly retreated to a less ridiculous number.
Many people knowledgeable about the federal budget said House Republicans could not keep their campaign promise to cut $100 billion from domestic spending in a single year. Now it appears that Republicans agree…
Now aides say that the $100 billion figure was hypothetical, and that the objective is to get annual spending for programs other than those for the military, veterans and domestic security back to the levels of 2008, before Democrats approved stimulus spending to end the recession…
On Tuesday, aides to Mr. Ryan and Mr. Boehner blamed Democrats’ failure to pass the regular appropriations bills for fiscal year 2011 for forcing Republicans to reduce their goal to perhaps $50 billion to $60 billion.
The $50-$60 billion number is still astronomically high, but it is at least within the realm of possibility. But look at what we’re still hearing from Republicans.
Last week, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) similarly proposed outlandish budget cuts, claiming, “My staff and I sat down, we’ve looked at the federal budget, and just our first swipe across the budget, so to speak, we’ve come up with about $450 billion worth of cuts.” Of course, Bachamann has yet to offer any specifics. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he’ll introduce “a one-year, $500 billion spending cut” this month, but that remains to be seen. This week at a town hall meeting in Alabama, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) one-upped Bachmann and his new Tea Party colleague…
Sen. Shelby (R-AL) is the Ranking Member on the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. He says we can cut the budget by 30%, or by about a trillion dollars. When Think Progress learned that he had also said we could cut the budget by 10%, they called his office to find out which number he wanted to stick with. His spokesmen feigned ignorance of either number and said that Shelby merely wanted to revert back to 2008 numbers.
All I’m saying here is that we really shouldn’t have to tolerate a party going around talking about cutting the budget by 10, 20, 50 times what is realistically possible. They aren’t even serious about the numbers. They’re just saying whatever bullshit they think people want to hear, or that will win them some attention.
We could make this easier by just changing the rules. We propose something and then they lie about what we proposed and refuse to support it. That is the basic structure of our government right now, and everything else is just extraneous window dressing and noise.
