Now They Worry?
The New York Times' Carl Hulse reports Friday that "[t]he drive to pour tens of billions of federal dollars into rebuilding the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast is widening a fissure among Republicans over fiscal policy, with more of them expressing worry about unbridled spending."
Now they're "expressing worry"?
Honestly. A gigantic highway bill containing more than 6,000 pork-barrel projects is okay. A huge energy bill stuffed full of pork and tax cuts for big energy, well that's fine too. But funding to relieve the financial burdens of hundreds of thousands of evacuated Americans and rebuild a devastated region of the country - that's beyond the pale?
Sheesh.
Clearly fiscal conservatives are correct to raise questions about how to pay the bills for Katrina's destructive wrath. It's stupid to suggest that more huge spending bills should be passed with no regard for the mounting deficits they create. Yes, the Administration and Congressional leadership ought to be looking for ways to offset the costs of Gulf Coast reconstruction. But will these sudden "fiscal conservatives" with a newfound "concern" about federal spending embrace some common-sense steps to offset Katrina-costs?
Here are a few possibilities:
- Cancel congressional "cost-of-living-increases" (read: pay raises) for the year.
- Repeal the highway and energy bills; pass them again without the pork-projects. And cut the pork from all of this year's appropriations bills now working their way through the system. That $223 million "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska can wait.
- Cut the massive subsidies doled out to "factory farms" whose owners have never milked a cow and probably couldn't tell a cornstalk from a lilypad.
- Don't repeal the millionaire inheritance tax (aka estate tax).
There, that's a start. I'm not talking about making drastic cuts to services and programs that benefit the American people, but let's remove some of the redundancies, the excess, and so forth. It can be done.
Fiscal conservatives are right to worry about wasteful spending, but rebuilding the Gulf Coast is hardly wasteful, and the wasteful spending trend is hardly new. Where have all these "worriers" been for the last four years of gluttony?
posted by JBD @ 7:07 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Greetings Jeremy,
Fiscally prudent legislators need to vote their stated beliefs and not the "leadership's arm-twisting demands". I thought the Contract With America was between individual Congressman and America's best interests. At least once a month, my Congressman sends an email stating his intent to continue the battle to restrain government spending yet votes the party line in the end. The House of Representatives needs to reform its committee structure. There are too many powerful Congressmen dictating funding for their interest groups ( be it local districts, state interests or lobbyist's customers ).
Katrina is a wake-up call. Questions are being posed as to why the levees were not upgraded? Did Louisiana's leaders lose their influence ? Were smaller (aka wrong) projects implemented, if funding was not obtained for expensive levee expansion ?
The legacy of the Bush presidency has to include the Expansion of Medicare with the addition of drug prescription expense and the Demise of Social Security.
Social Security Reform must be Agenda One. The reform that needs to be done is not Bush's privatization but Gore's lockbox. The continued spending of the excessive Social Security contributions today, on wasteful pork projects, is a threat to the long term solvency of the program. Just like the non-recognition of fixing the levee problem before it broke will cost the American taxpayers significantly more, so will address the spending of the excess Social Security contributions.
McPherson Hall
It has been almost 4, now 5 years, of fiscal irresponsibility by the GOP leadership. And from that irresponsibility all we have to show for it are massive deficits, expensive yet worthless pork projects, a war effort that is still shockinlgy underfunded and mismanaged, and leadership that's suddenly worried about spending on something that actually matters (rebuilding an entire region of the United States and improving the lives of the poor and middle class people living there) all because it doesn't benefit their corporate lobbyist overlords who can't get the no-bid contracts that always go to Halliburton.
This is reason #237 out of 450 I left the Republican Party this year.
Everything you wrote Jeremy, by the way, makes perfect sense, ought to be implemented and stuck to by the GOP leadership, but knowing their spinelessness when it comes to decisive action, you're better off hoping the Greens and Libertarians come to power...
I think the best signal for fiscal restraint would be not to make the tax cuts of the Bush Administration permanent. And I would like to add two more steps of courage by this President: He should appoint another 9/11 type bipartisan commission to investigate what went wrong and a Czar to watch the money!
I am currently listening to Thom Hartmann on RadioPower, and he is having his "Lunch with Bernie" segment with Independent (only independent) House member Bernie Sanders...awesome listening.
8.3 trillion in debt currently (before all the hurricane spending equates to about $26,000 per person.
This is not new news...where was the fiscal conservatism before we were in the hole this deep.
Jes
After reading some of the comments above after I wrote my first comment, I think it's time we start not criticize the Republican politicians like Delay, Haskert et al. The real problem is more to the point of the comment by Jerry above "a large portion of their constituency will not be aware that that's hogwash." The problem is that we have some really unconscious, ignorant and self centered/self righteous constituents supporting this Administration. You can't even have an intelligent conversation with them as most still beleive that dinasours lived with Adam and Eve and that President Bush is a Conservative. Unbelievable!
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