Tag Archives: GOP

Tea and No Sympathy

There is an old joke that begins “Why tax the rich?” Answer: because that’s where the money is.

For some reason, the current crop of Tea Party Republicans in Congress continue to look for money in all the wrong places. Their insistence on spending cuts not only ignores basic economics–the sorts of cuts they are promoting would reduce consumer spending dramatically, and throw us back into recession–the cuts they are proposing are mean-spirited and inequitable.

Paul Ryan, the current poster-boy for “fiscal conservatism” unveiled a budget that would eliminate Medicare in favor of “subsidies” allowing the disabled and elderly to purchase private (far more costly) insurance. My husband and I were watching his press conference, as he explained this; as my husband pointed out, in reality this would be a “subsidy” all right–to private insurance companies.

The GOP budget was all like this: lots of pain for the have-nots, lots of gain for the already-haves.

Now, my well-meaning libertarian friends will argue that it isn’t government’s place to help people. Private charity, they believe, will take up the slack. However naive I may consider that belief, it does not answer a more basic question: if government is supposed to simply “get out of the way,” if the state is to be properly trimmed back to function only as a “night watchman,” where are the proposals to strip away all of the benefits government is lavishing on the well-to-do?

I’ll consider those proposals to strip the needy of the last shreds of the social safety net when those “limited government” advocates also propose removing the cushy tax breaks enjoyed by businesses, the subsidies to obscenely profitable oil companies, and the mortgage deductions for second and third homes.

Until I see those proposed “cuts,” and efforts to make the effective tax rate on millionaires approach the truly confiscatory policies being proposed for the poor, I’m calling this what it is: despicable.

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Interesting Observation

My granddaughter Sarah currently lives in Wales; she is attending the University of Wales and will graduate this summer. She reads the Guardian, and this morning sent me the following text message.

“Taken from the comment and debate section of the Guardian this morning: ‘what you need to say and do to be credible in the Republican Party essentially deprives you of credibility outside it. The Republicans recognize this, but like an obese glutton at an all-you-can-eat buffet, they just can’t seem to help themselves.'”

The comment was in response to an article on “The American Right, Stuck in a Hyperbolic World,” and I think it captured the current dynamic perfectly. Right now, for example, it looks quite likely that the House GOP will shut down government, despite Democrats’ willingness to meet their demands halfway. (The Republicans want 60 billion in cuts; Democrats are offering 30 billion.) They seem absolutely oblivious to the damage indiscriminate cuts will do to the still-fragile recovery–and equally oblivious to the political damage their posturing is inflicting.

As the commenter noted, they just can’t help themselves.

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Welcome to Never-Neverland

I know my posts sound increasingly frustrated these days. Here is just one example of why that is.

According to Talking Points Memo,

“Thirty-one Republicans on the House Energy And Commerce Committee — the entire Republican contingent on the panel — declined on Tuesday to vote in support of the very idea that climate change exists.

Democrats on the panel had suggested three amendments that said climate change is a real thing, is caused by humans and has potentially dire consequences for the future. The amendments came on a Republican bill to block the EPA from offering regulations to mitigate the results of global climate shifts. The global scientific community is in near unanimous agreement that climate change is real, and that humans contribute to it.

None of the 31 Republicans on the committee would vote yes on any of the amendments..”

I know that every legislative body and every political party has its nuts and ideologues. But thirty-one members of the GOP and U.S. Congress voting against reality really boggles the imagination. There are plenty of aspects of reality that I don’t like–beginning with the fact that science denial is making the world more dangerous for my children and grandchildren–but that doesn’t mean I can blithely pretend they don’t exist. Refusing to acknowledge facts in evidence is suicidal for individuals and societies alike.

The fact that these people were elected in what I can only assume were fair and free elections is infinitely depressing. But it really happened and their decisions have real consequences.

And whether they choose to ignore it or not, climate change is accelerating, and the consequences of their refusal to acknowledge that reality and deal with it will affect believers and nonbelievers alike.

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There’s the Talk, and There’s the Walk…….

I continue to be amazed by how blatant right wing hypocrisy has become.

The most recent example (okay, one of the many recent examples) occurred last week in Washington.  House Democrats offered a motion to cut the budget by putting an end to taxpayer-funded subsidies to large oil companies. Rep. William Keating (D-MA) offered the motion on the House floor saying “let’s stop sending taxpayers’ money to the most profitable companies in the world.”

Republicans voted unanimously against the motion, defeating it by a vote of 176-249. Those would be the same Republicans who are constantly talking about the need to reduce the deficit. Evidently, what they mean by “reduce the deficit” is “reduce the deficit to the extent we can do so on the backs of middle-class taxpayers.”

And speaking of talks and walks, it will be interesting to see what Indiana Governor Mitch “Social Issues Truce” Daniels does when the anti-immigration bill hits his desk.

Daniels has certainly talked the talk of fiscal responsibility. Lately, in fact, he’s “talked the talk” incessantly, as he clearly is positioning himself to run for President. The Indiana business community, Indiana’s Mayors (with the curious exception of Greg Ballard), Indianapolis’ convention bureau and many others–including Mitch’s former employer, Eli Lilly & Company–have all argued that Senator Delph’s bill would hurt Indiana’s economy and intensify the state’s fiscal woes, and Daniels clearly knows that they are correct. In any sane world, the Governor would veto the bill. But in order to have a shot at the Republican nomination, he has to play to the prejudices of the far right zealots who have for all intents and purposes captured the party.

We know he can talk the talk. It will be interesting to see if he can also walk the walk.

Another Year

How does that old song go? “Another year older and deeper in debt”? That could be our new national anthem, since it captures both our moral and fiscal deficits.

As I write this, Senate Republicans have refused to allow a vote on repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and prospects for bringing it back to the floor before the conclusion of the lame-duck session are iffy, at best. This intransigence has persisted despite the fact that the Secretary of Defense and most of the highest-ranking military officials have testified in favor of repeal, and despite the fact that polls show a sizeable majority of Americans in favor of allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly.

Before you shake your head about the persistence of homophobia, however, let me remind you that the gay community hasn’t been singled out. Senate Republicans have also refused, once again, to fund medical care for the brave men and women who were first responders on 9/11. I don’t use the word “hero” very often, but that’s what these firefighters, police officers and medics were. They braved the inferno that was the Twin Towers in order to rescue those inside, and they are now suffering from injuries and illnesses caused by that rescue operation.

The refusal to repeal DADT is excused by mumbling “unit cohesion.” The refusal to provide desperately-needed medical care to first responders has been justified by several Senators on the basis that the expense would add to the deficit.  They have cited the same excuse for their refusal to extend unemployment benefits for the millions of Americans who still cannot find work.

The elephant in this room filled with elephants is tax breaks for American families earning over 250,000 a year. As Obama correctly noted in a press conference where he tried to explain his capitulation on the issue, the Senate GOP was holding these measures—and many others—hostage to their insistence that the richest 2% of Americans retain the favorable tax rates they received from George W. Bush.

It is true that helping first responders and unemployed people would cost money. But extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy will add billions more to the deficit than those measures would. Furthermore, unemployment benefits put dollars in the hands of people who immediately spend those dollars, and thus stimulate the economy. (People defend our historically low tax rates for the rich by claiming those dollars will be spent to create jobs; however, the evidence shows otherwise.)

So here we are, ending the first decade of the 21st century facing moral and fiscal bankruptcy.

Our government is broken; it now takes sixty votes to get any measure through the U.S. Senate, making a mockery of democracy and majority rule, and allowing a cohesive and determined minority to hold the nation hostage to the demands of the greedy and privileged. The income gap between rich and poor is wider than it has been since the gilded age, and the strain that gap places on our civic fabric is immense.

This is the environment within which we enter the New Year, and this is the environment within which gay citizens must work to achieve equal rights. It isn’t just DADT repeal—history has plenty of examples of what happens to minority groups during periods of national upheaval and fiscal distress. When times are tough, people look around for someone to blame.  In Germany, before WWII, it was the Jews. In the U.S. today, it is gays and immigrants.

People have asked me, over the years, why I advocate for equal rights for gays and lesbians. My answer has always been the same: I’m selfish. I want equality for myself, and I understand that only in a country where everyone is equal can anyone be equal. But the flip side of that is equally true. Gays and lesbians cannot achieve equality in an unequal and inequitable system. We are all in this together.

Happy New Year. I guess.