The state of our national government is in shambles. We are so far removed from the traditional political divide. To explain what is going on in Washington would require use of a metaphor such as The Mariana Trench to explain it. The Democrats might as well be speaking Mandarin and the Republicans, Latin. The American people as a consequence are, of course, def, blind, and dumb. Our politics has really devolved into the ‘us-them’ model and the only real losers are the American people.
The Republicans, led by House Speaker Boehner, promised a principled stand against spending. Their target at first was $100 billion, than $60 billion before settling for roughly $36 billion. While that was disappointing to many, it did show life on the side of the Republicans. It turns out now that all of it was a lie. A numbers game with no real impact on the budget or the deficit: CBO Says Budget Deal Will Cut Spending by Only $352 Million. Remember this was touted as an “historic” budget deal.
Here’s how the great game was played.
All the cuts in the deal aren’t equal. The ones that matter most are the cuts in discretionary spending that reduce the budget baseline in future years. Even with more the details of the deal released early yesterday morning, the exact numbers are still shrouded in confusion, but it is clear the cuts are much less than meets the eye — the gimmickry is not merely around the edges.
The $38.5 billion includes real cuts, but also a dog’s breakfast of budgetary legerdemain. According to the Associated Press, the deal purports to save $2.5 billion “from the most recent renewal of highway programs that can’t be spent because of restrictions set by other legislation.” It gets another $4.9 billion by capping a reserve fund for the victims of crime that also wasn’t going to be spent this year — a long-standing trick of appropriators. The Washington Post reports that a notional $3.5 billion cut from the Children’s Health Insurance Program “would affect only rewards for states that make an extra effort to enroll children. But officials with knowledge of the budget deal said that most states were unlikely to qualify for the bonuses and that sufficient money would be available for those that did.” And so on. There’s realism and then there’s cynicism. This deal — oversold and dependent on classic Washington budget trickery — comes too close to the latter. John Boehner has repeatedly said he’s going to reject “business as usual,” but that’s what he’s offered his caucus. It’s one thing for Tea Party Republicans to vote for a cut that falls short of what they’d get if the controlled all of Washington; it’s another thing for them, after making so much of bringing transparency and honesty to the Beltway, to vote for a deal sold partly on false pretenses. (National Review)
Then you have the most partisan and socially dividing president in American history adding fuel to the fire.
Throwing more wrenches into an already broken system by using his typical vitriolic, hyper-partisan and misleading method when he chooses to address the nation on an important issue. He promises no reform in Medicaid or Medicare. Secondly, he said Republicans and Democrats must come together — actually, as we can see, that’s the last thing we need — but where does fit into this? He practically let his Democrats write his laws and budgets for the first two years he was in office.
Mr. Obama did not deign to propose an alternative to rival Mr. Ryan’s plan, even as he categorically rejected all its reform ideas, repeatedly vilifying them as essentially un-American. “Their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America,” he said, supposedly pitting “children with autism or Down’s syndrome” against “every millionaire and billionaire in our society.” The President was not attempting to join the debate Mr. Ryan has started, but to close it off just as it begins and banish House GOP ideas to political Siberia.
Mr. Obama then packaged his poison in the rhetoric of bipartisanship–which “starts,” he said, “by being honest about what’s causing our deficit.” The speech he chose to deliver was dishonest even by modern political standards. (Wall Street Journal).
Whether Paul’s budget is right or wrong isn’t the issue. He didn’t propose it in the hopes it would pass. He knew it wouldn’t pass. Consider it a policy wonk’s manifesto on spending and a challenge to Obama without really risking anything in return. Lastly, it was a credibility option for GOP to address the deficit crisis by using one of its brightest. The real focus remains the deficit, however; and neither side has shown urgency or ownership of the crisis. And without leaders, there can be no solutions.
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