The budget "battle" currently playing out in Congress is really the most simple of affairs to analyze. It is, that is, unless you are completely ignorant of the overall goals of the two parties waging this "battle."
For the GOP, the goal is simple: significantly reduce federal spending. The catch for them is the word "significant." Tea Party folk not only want big cuts, they want them carried out in certain areas. These 'targets' for curtailed funding include NPR, Public Television, Planned Parenthood, certain 'Global Cooling" initiatives, and, especially, Obamacare. If the GOP leadership doesn't hold out for real cuts in some or all of these areas and at least $50 billion overall, elements within the Tea Party are said to be ready to bolt the party and form their own conservative party.
The Democrats have their own problems. The eternal problem for leftists is convincing enough people that they aren't really leftists but just middle-of-the-road centrists. To this end, the Squirrel himself, Harry Reid (Millions know him as "Dingy Harry") actually said this within the last 24 hours: republicans are forcing a government shutdown so they can prevent old ladies from getting cancer screenings. He also said that Tea Party Folk are out-of-the-mainstream hardliners. Now, forget the fact that the Dingy one (most famous quote, made before the Bush "surge" that wrapped up the winning of the Iraq war: "this war is lost!") doesn't even believe the economy is all that bad, Harry and other uber leftists believe it is their holy mission in life to give away our money until the "poor" are getting enough federal money to make their incomes equal to those who work. but even that isn't really true; the uber left's raison de etre is giving federal money (i.e., your money) away. They believe that when they can no longer give money away the poor will abandon them and their raison de etre will be no more.). What all of this means to the now uber-left led Dems is that the only place to cut spending is in the defense budget. those on the uber left are largely pacifistic and really see no need to buy all those silly guns.
Besides the long-term goals of the GOP and uber left, other things are in play. Several weeks ago Chuck Schumer was on NBC being thrown softballs by host Matt Lauer. According to Schumer, the GOP wants to make deep cuts in such cash cows as NPR and PBS and global warming programs. Imagine that! With the country teetering on the brink of economic disaster, the far left leadership of the democratic party - Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Schumer, Durbin and the like, are trying to protect things like NPR and Global Warming programs from budget cuts. Factories employing the heads of families and single parents are closing everywhere, the unemployment rate is at levels not seen since the Great Depression, and the uber left is trying to fully fund Planned Parenthood and NPR. The nation's military is deployed, by Obama, in three war zones and yet Obama is seeking to save a propaganda arm of his administration (that would be NPR and Public Television). In a timely reminder of the truth of the propaganda arm allegation, a top NPR exec was outed by the same folk who did ACORN in. Posing as "Muslim Investors," they engaged this executive in conversation and listened in awe as the exec forcefully berated conservatives and vowed NPR would never go down that road.
But the GOP has also come close to fracturing along the fissure between the Tea Party and the old line cocktail brand of republicans. This later group's poster child is House Majority Leader John Baener. With talk of a third party to the right of the GOP being formed by disgruntled tea party folk, Baener has refused to get aggressive in the budget fight. Most people believe that cuts on the order of $50 to $75 billion are necessary to turn the ship of state around, but Baener and company are apparently satisfied with quite a bit less. Worse yet for those trying to reconcile the two sides, Baener has already publicly disdained the GOP trump card by saying he wanted to avoid a shut down at all costs.
It's the "all costs" comment that has those trying to keep the party together crying in their beer.
No comments:
Post a Comment