The House Republican leadership is continuing its tireless mission of pitching legislation that will never become law, like spending cuts they say will save $2.5 trillion over 10 years. Some of this is in specific cuts, like a “$1 million mohair subsidy,” which is bravely included despite the overwhelming political power of goats. But much more of it is in “firing 15 percent of the federal workforce and returning to 2006 spending levels for non-defense agencies starting in 2012.” That’s nice and unspecific and theoretical. Just tap the federal government with Paul Ryan’s magic pair of safety scissors, and suddenly it’s 2006 again. Hey, it will never pass anyway. May as well!
According to Democratic estimates, cuts of that magnitude – if applied across the board – would require the Justice Department to fire 4,000 FBI agents and 1,500 agents at the Drug Enforcement Administration. The federal prison system would have to fire 5,700 correctional officers, the Agriculture Department would have to cut about 3,000 food safety inspectors, and the Head Start early-childhood education program would be forced to cut about 389,000 children from its rolls.
Hey, we all have to pitch in to pay for those corporate tax loopholes and endless wars half a world away, right?
Of course, of the specific cuts, there are some pretty good ones, because we have a giant government that does a lot of dumb crap. For example: AMTRAK subsidies. Who uses Amtrak besides people who are afraid of flying and people on the East Coast with fancy scarves? Those fancy scarf people have the Megabus. Just use that.
Then there are these things:
Exchange programs for Alaska, native Hawaiians, and their trading partners in Mass: $9 million
We don’t need to be funding new words for “snow” and “volcano.” Fuck the natives!
Subsidy for DC’s WMATA: $150 million
Assistance to District of Columbia: $210 million
Fuck D.C.! You help the federal government for free or you will be bombed. (There will be no cuts in bomb spending, hooray!)
And then there are things that have to be put in quotation marks, so you know those have to be solid:
“Obamacare administrative costs”: $900 million
Repeal of Davis-Bacon: “More than $1 billion”
There are also token cuts to, for example, a poor person’s ability to have a lawyer in court and to things that entertain libruls, such as public television and not destroying the environment with coal.
And, of course:
Aid to Egypt: $250 million
Fuuuuuuuuck Egypt. [WP/Weigel]
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Republicans propose spending cuts except for the biggest drains, being social programs targeted at their base of frightened elderly people, and the defense budget, because AMERICA FUCK YEAH? Well, color me shocked.
Oh they want to cut social security too, I am wondering what corporate welfare will be cut. Will Michelle GBachman's farm subsidies go away?
If the Republicans get to decide what cuts get cut, we can color you colored as well. Now move to the back of the bus and STFU.
There was a reason that Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, etc. refused to detail their economic agenda before the November election. It was OK to cheerlead on tax cuts and spending cuts, but when questioned as to which programs they would cut, they would shake, sweat, and then go back to the same old talking points.
Well, fuckers, you got what you wanted. Now lets see what happens when you start trying to cut the programs that people actually care about.
Maybe increasing revenues is starting to sound like a good idea now?
What do we save if we cut Boehner's Platinum IV membership at L.A. Tans?
We need more ethanol!
I know I do.
The Archer Daniels Midland subsidy remains intact, I presume? Thats a brilliant subsidy, instead of taxing the poor, and giving to the rich, Congress cut out the middleman (themselves) and just makes us buy ADM's ethanol, so what if it rots our outboard motor's fuel lines and such.
I've been using ethanol in my vehicles since 1977, never have had one fuel related failure.
Oddly enough, no one gave one thought to ethanol until it was discovered that MTBE caused contamination in drinking water and ethanol replaced it as the oxygenate in gasoline.
But, please, feel free to rage on.
Yeah, I wish my car runs on Prosecco, so we can invade Venezia.
The Justice Department would have to fire 4,000 FBI agents
The Drug Enforcement Administration, 1,500
The Federal Prison System, 5,700 correctional officers
The Agriculture Department, 3,000 food safety inspectors
Head Start would be forced to cut about 389,000 children from its rolls
So what do we do with these newly lethally trained unemployed socialists? Outsource to Mexican Cartels? Institute new Soldiers of Fortune militias?
How do the Republicans reconcile that life begins in the womb but we are starving and keeping illiterate nearly a half a million afterborns?
Maybe, but think how much more drugs you could do with fewer DEA narcs nosing around.
The Republican agenda is to use faux-Christian issues like abortion to convince largely poor and middle class Christians that Jesus wants Republicans to be rich and powerful. 700 years ago we called this the divine right of kings. Nowadays libertarian economic theory legitimizes it, and a few oeuvres to social backwardness convince stupid people that this is an acceptable arrangement.
Divine Right of Feebs.
Supply chain management.
On the bright side, all lethally trained class who will be laid off will have their eyes finally opened and vote Dem. It happened with the 9/11 first responders, "I always voted Republican, but can't believe they're screwing me like this." Or maybe they'll just go on shooting sprees, who knows.
I know Mavis Beacon is the gold standard for typing tutors and I'm sure government employees need to type proficiently, but 1 billion?
Turn back the Federal budget to 2006?
Meh…might as well. My salary's the same as it was in 2006 and my retirement account looks like it's 1973.
Even better, turn back all budget items related to technology to 1950.
The GOP: Leading America into the 15th Century.
Even better, turn back all budget items related to technology to 1850. There fixed that for you.
It'll be good just as long as they don't cut military spending and farm subsidies, the two big chunks of America's budget that actually are wasteful.
Indeed, those industries with big lobbies don't get cuts. No mystery here.
To my surprise, Davis-Bacon is not the term for bloated agriculture subsidies. It's the requirement that workers get paid a fair wage in government contracting, giving local contractors a fair chance to compete.
I'm so surprised that this plan was written by total unserious assholes.
Oh, you mean that requirement Dubya waived on the Gulf Coast after Katrina so he wouldn't have to pay all the trucked-in recovery workers a living wage? Yeah, that's an unfair tax on business if ever one came along.
The $1B savings number is highly suspicious. Repeal of D-B would maybe save something on future construction costs, but who — even at the all-knowing CBO — could really say how much and how soon?
It's not like those workers pay income taxes that would go down if they were paid less or anything.
So it's also a tax cut! win win!
I kept hearing how all the workers were illegal mexican immigrants so it only seems logical.
I used to benefit from Davis-Bacon (I built highways). In non-DB contracts, non-union bids weren't much lower, the excess just went into the pocket of the contractor instead of the workers. Griftopia ftw.
The oil depletion allowance needs to be increased. A coal depletion allowance needs to be instituted. Priorities people.
If the Tea Party and the Republicans really think firing thousands of people will help the economy, they are clearly stupid and should never be listened to again.
They could go to work for themselves. I understand there are a lot of opportunities at the Web site Sugar Sugar.
Well they kind of said all of this stuff going in, so that they were stupid is pretty evident, that real problem is that the people who vote for them are really stupid.
It's not about the parties, it's about the lack of strong unions (thanks again, Reagan). If they fire that amount of people in France, they burn Paris.
"Repeal of Davis-Bacon"
Better not let their greasy-fingered supporters hear they're against bacon.
Corn and other ag subsidies are vital to the nation's defense, obvs. Any average Joe Miller could tell you that.
Money saving Idear #325: Lets make the Pentagon merely a Triangle.
Al-Qaeda tried that.
You some kind of terrorist, or something?
And I thought we exhausted all the 3/5 jokes yesterday.
nah, only 60% of 'em
You get to count every tax cut as a double points good deficit reduction! Less revenue equals less debt!!!
every time we take a buck, we throw out a banana…
Some of Maeby's best work, right there.
If the poorz aren't guilty, then why were they arrested? Just lock 'em up. In fact, charge 'em munnies for being arrested.
I feel sorry for those of you with children.
It's OK, they expect enormous changes at the last minute.
Is that supposed to be funny? Some days that's funny. Some days it sets off my fear and trembling response. Mark Riley, when he was still on Air America, used to refer to Bush's plan for privatizing S.S. as the "screw the future" plan. Obviously this is Boehner's interpretation of that same idea.
Ask Austrailia how that private system is working out for them. They may have some comments on what the crash did for them.
Ask the Chileans, too.
Don't feel guilty about screwing over your future self. Remember, your future self would screw you over too, if time ran the other way.
I have children. I feel sorry for them. Somehow, we turned into an oligolopolistic empire, just like all the historical empires. People my age lived through the fat part. My kids are likely to live through the decline.
We don't need all of those FBI agents anyway. They're all just busy trying to make up a terrorist plot and annoying the local Muslims.
Just jettison those child labor laws, especially those that prohibit child soldiers. The hands of our military have been tied long enough. Children eat less and you don't have to pay them much, just promise them a WII when their tour of duty ends.
But do you have to actually come through on the Wii?
Only for those who survive. And since you would go to war with the children you have, not the children you wish you have, we're probably not talking about a major outlay of cash.
WWIII on Wii?
Who says they're gonna finish their tour of duty?
And as we've seen, child soldiers tend to get their budding empathy and sympathy beat out of them and wind up shooting anyone who is standing between them and a bit of food. Or who is a grownup.
Oh, and Boehner's spokesman Micheal Steel (without the trailing e) is a moron:
""But that will be the beginning, not the end, of our efforts to cut spending and create jobs"
Cutting spending destroys jobs, it does not create them, your efforts are designed to deliberately increase unemployment, stop saying you want to "create jobs" when you are doing the exact opposite.
Arrgghh RAGE RAGE RAGE RAGE RAGE
Easy there, Soros, we're only a couple of weeks into this Congress. You're going to hear this kind of shit for at least two weeks, so pace yourself.
If only it was just two weeks! Two more years at least.
I realized I'd written that but then the comment wasn't showing up so I thought IntenseDebate had eated it and I couldn't edit. But yes, I meant to say at least two more years.
It looks like IntenseDebate restores eaten comments if and when someone replies to the same comment; so OneDollarJuana must have pulled yours back out of limbo.
We had to destroy the job in order to save it.
"If you love that job, set it free by outsourcing it. If it comes back Stateside, then that's where you were meant to toil…"
2006? Gimme 1928! Except without prohibition. Repeal the New Deal and everything that followed.
Let's try the good old Hoovernomics!
I'd be okay about cutting the DEA agents – we could de-criminalize dope, raise revenue, and not have to hire so many corrections officers to guard the highest percentage of incarcerated citizens in the world. That is the GOP plan, right?
Do see no cuts in ag subsidies, just them city-dwellin' welfare queens. This is more of the rural v. urban crusade. Here in the real Warshingon, the C'Addled PI reports that King County (that's the one with Seattle) pays 42% of the state's tax revenues and only gets back 25% on the spending side. This is common in states that have actual cities. Say in Barry's home state of Illinois, the typical welfare queen is not black and urban, but white and rural.
But hey Agent Orange is trying. Yeah, it is going to be a trying two years.
The other thing common is that the rural morons complain about their tax money going to help the cities and all those non-white people, when the truth is the exact opposite. Living in Philly, sometimes I wish we could secede from PA.
'Zactly so. WA is getting moar and moar to referendums, and in some of the rural counties they were talkin' about putting together a referendum to prohibit collecting tax dollars collected in one county and spending it in a different county. Their state reps were able to put the kybosh on that before they chopped off both feet with a dull ax and sent the county back to the days of dirt roads and one-room schools ya had to walk to.
Seeing what goes on in California and other West Coast states with that referendum shit makes me glad that at least we don't have them here, so the rednecks can only indirectly fuck with us through the state congress.
Governor Locke's biggest mistake was replacing the funds lost when the rural's voted down the license plate taxes with general funds, thus removing consequences of elections (many rural Washington towns got the bulk of their funds from car tab taxes). We are still suffering from that compound stupidity.
I wish someone would actually get a law like that to pass. It would put everything in perspective very quickly.
All the while, the goobers in Wenatchee and Pomeroy bitch about how they're marginalized and short-changed by the librul city slickers. Yeah, we get that here in Portland, too.
I challenge anyone to look at this proposal and tell me the two parties are just alike and elections don't matter.
[fingers in ears]
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-cant'-hear-you-I'm-too-busy-fantasizing-strange-intimate-encounters-with-Ralph-Nader-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-.
And you know, this is just the start of 2 years of feces flinging.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
It's not results that count, merely effort. "Well, they tried, Martha, best they can do so long as That One remains in office. Send them little Bobby's Jesus Camp money."
Can't we just sell Alaska back to the Russians? Think of all the problems it would solve.
And I wonder how much weed Mexico would give us for Texas and Arizona?
You're right. Its definitely time to downsize Amurikka to something we can afford.
Keep New Mexico. Lotsa Native Americans and midwives and artists.
Sell? How about we GIVE it back, and include a new set of tires to boot!
Are you going to take the other two off of Jerry's car?
"Repeal of Davis-Bacon: “More than $1 billion”
What did Jefferson Davis do to deserve this?
mmmmmm. bacon.
If Ward Cleaver could make ends meet on one income we shouldn't have any trouble. Don Draper too for that matter.
I remember a time when cutting government spending usually started by looking at the DoD. Thank God we have beatified those bastards so that everything Defense (from what?) related is sacrsosant and therefore not eligible for any kind of discussion or examination.
Eisenhower told you this was gonna happen. So now you're surprised? As Lincoln said, we're only here to make sure that government of the military, by the military and for the military does not perish from the earth. (before it melts)
The needs of the many outweigh the wants of the 1%.
In terms of mass, sure. But what is important is not quantity, but maintaining The Quality.
Apparently that is only true in theory, not practice.
I must respectfully disagree, Manchu, as reality has shown us that the wants of the 1% outweigh the needs of the many…, in the US.
The cool thing is if they kill Amtrack, they will be killing it in dumfuckistan, not here in fancy scarf land. The Northeast corridor more than pays its own way, in fact, fares from the northeast subsidize the dumbfuckistani parts of Amtrak. They really do enjoy fucking themselves, those dumbfucks.
You could put trucknutz on a caboose, and it still wouldn't do Amtrak any good in dumbfuckistan.
(I know, my post makes no sense, but when will I ever get the chance to type "put trucknutz on a caboose" again?)
Sheriff…there's this little place in Nowhere, Nevada and they only charge about $20 to put yer trucknutz on a caboose.
I heard that Toad Palin's Hoor has a caboose so big, you could put a bunch of trucknuts on it at once.
Speaking as a fancy scarf-wearing, Northeast corridor living, Amtrak riding (Acela, natch) librul, I'm cool with that. Maybe then we can use the extra money we save to upgrade the tracks and bring the DC/NYC travel time in under 2 hours! Fuck yeah!
Oh great. They'll probably kill it here in Cali, where it's occasionally useful, and when it is useful tends to replace lots of passenger miles.
Maybe they're on to something here. The legal marijuana industry (inevitable, in my view) is going to need some able workers who know a thing or two about drugs.
Let me know before that happens so I can buy a bunch of Hostess stock. The sales of Twinkies, Snowballs and Ding Dongs will go through roof.
Funny, back in my long-gone stoner days, I never got into the sugary stuff. My go-to munchies were giant Dagwood-style sandwiches and thick, juicy steaks.
Yet another reason why pot should be legalized: encourages teenage boys to learn how to cook for themselves.
You can have my bacon when you pry it from my greasy, salt-bloated, cardiac-arrested hands!
I'm going to Megabust a nut on all these GOPlayerhaters.
I love playing 6 degrees of Davis-Bacon but I never knew it was that expensive.
Geena Davis was in Fletch with Beau Starr, who was in Where the Truth Lies with Kevin Bacon.
If Hollywood could repeal those money-losing movies, they would.
Well Played sir.
Two years of this shit. This hypocritical, toxic, insane shit. I need to check my liver in to hotel.
Well, it looks painful and job-killing and addresses the wrong problems — but if we can't trust the party that swore the Iraq invasion would pay for itself, that revoked the pay-as-you-go principle the previous Congress used, that carved out an exception for their own watered-down paygo rule so they could vote against Obamacare and that is itself running a deficit due to its party leadership's bad management and fiscal lying, who can we trust?
Painful and job killing is what its all about. The GOP plan is to reduce the Amurikan standard of living to where its just below Botswanna's and then blame that on Obama. This is rated as brilliant in bizarro world.
Egypt's got all those priceless artifacts just hanging around the Cairo museum, where socialistically anyone who wants to can see them, when they could sell them and make a lot of money and see that these treasures go where they belong, into the private collections of the world's richest men.
I'm surprised the Tea Party didn't suggest just praying away the deficit. It is, after all, what saved Giffords. If it's good enough for health care, it should be good enough for our fiscal policy.
Pray Away the Davis-Bacon!
Are you sure the Teabaggers were praying for Giffords to live?
"Justice Department to fire 4,000 FBI agents and 1,500 agents at the Drug Enforcement Administration. The federal prison system would have to fire 5,700 correctional officers."
Meh.
Wonder how they plan to fight illegal immigration, if Border Agents have to be let go due to budget cuts?
Lets see. Spending money to actually help USAmerikuns = wasteful
Spending 1.5 trillion monies a year to kill brown people = Christianity
I'm beginning to think I get it.
If we subsidize mo'hair why are so many men bald??
The obvious solution is to declare war on Switzerland, invade, and take all their money.
That is OUR money.
Or rather, 82 out of 100 US corporations money.
Isn't Switzerland one of the places the American Plutocrats hide their money from having to pay US taxes? So in a way it IS already "our" money. We just need to claim it.
Let's see, we've got a navy bigger than the next 19 largest combined. And an air force that buzzes around in useless "fighters" and "bombers" at $5,000/hour maintenance cost, not counting fuel and personnel. So cutting everything but defense is perfectly rational.
If you don't use those bombs and bullets they'll all go bad and need to be replaced. What's the use of having them if you can't use them to fight our largest corporations' trade wars?
There was a great photo in the Post yesterday, showing a U.S. Marine using a very expensive gadget to map the iris of some poor Afghani – no kidding. At the same time, the City of Camden NJ laid off something like half of its police department.
We have the TWO largest air forces in the world. The US air force and the US navy(yeah they gots lots of planes too). Watch the republican bed wetters get their panties in a bunch because China is building an aircraft carrier(as in 1), while we only have 11 nuclear powered aircraft carriers.
Remember when President Clinton ordered Tomahawk missiles fired into Afghanistan to strike Al Queda training camps, and the wingnuts were freaking out about the fact that we were running short of Tomahawk missiles?
Good times. Good times.
"Aid to Egypt: $250 million.
Fuuuuuuuuck Egypt."
Franklin and I could not disagree more with this post, as much as Franklin savors the thought of having sexual intercourse with our little Egypt-Ian friends.
Our aid to Egypt was pushed through by TrueLiberal House Building Hero President Jimmy Carter in order to buy the Camp David Accord for our TrueLiberal Jewish friends. If that funding is cut, those Egypt-Ians are gong to be coming over the Sinai/Gaza border like a pack of hungry Mexicans looking for gardening work in West Los Angeles.
And Franklin doubts that our TrueLiberal leaders (e.g., Goldman Sachs[1]) will like that very much — and may not buy our current TrueLiberal Hero President his re-election.
Cordially,
Eleanor
[1] What a lovely, lilting Irish name that is.
People, please do not respond to not-Neilist; ignore the trolls please.
And stop thumbing the trolls. We have our own negative-pee champion.
That's what she said.
For that, i give you a well-deserved thumbs down. Keep up the good work (er, down).
Agreed. And I wonder what could possibly make a person so pissy? And so increasingly biggoted in each post…..*sigh* someones need attention………
Wish I could give you a hundred thumbs up. If I have time to go to our computer lab later…
Never have so many sacrificed so much for so few.
Is "Galt's Gulch" hiring?
Not anymore; since none of the residents actually knew how to do any real work, they all starved to death.
The FBI I can understand, because who goes after corrupt congress people, the FBI of course and that could hurt republicans. Don't tell me that republicans didn't learn anything from the Abramhoff scandal.
Amtrak? Yeah, if you want to look to the furture of travel, it's trains. (not)
Yeah, we much prefer the "furture" of travel via personal terrorism-finance-mobiles and those portable Guantanamo-cylinders with the screaming-baby audio tracks and the peanuts.
I commute by train and it takes a whopping 5 minutes longer than commuting by car in the traffic. My own personal future of travel is: train for work, car for fun. I save my car for the weekends,
I feel sorry for people who have to buy gasoline, send their hard earned money overseas to OPEC, wear down their cars, and sit frustrated in traffic. I would feel bad for them, if they hadn't voted for all this stupidity.
We need $100 billion in cuts applied directly to the red states. Let them show the rest of us how this "local control and responsibility" really works.
Possible silver lining: maybe they'll fire 15% of themselves.
The New Republicans: Saying No in a Brand New Way
The surest way to save money is to turn the clock back to the heyday of Bush "__ and spend" economics. Yay, fiscal conservatism!
Well, they did promise to make Government smaller, didn't they?. What better way to start than getting rid of a bunch of workers? Besides, everyone knows that Real JERBS only come from the private sector.
How did Bush get ahold of an iPad?
It's a mil-spec Etch-a-Sketch.
He uses it to deflect flying shoes. Also as a night light.
Wasn't 2006 the year the GOP was revealed to be a giant, gay bathhouse? No wonder they want to go back to those days.
Its only taken two weeks for the House to become a Kabuki theater, bad Kabuki theater.
Our children isn't learning.
And they want to cut how much in defense spending?
negative one hundred billion.
not a farthing or pfennig
They could save 20% just by using Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons for everything. Plus cut 15% of Congressional seats. Selling Texas to Mexico would raise a few bucks and it's a win-win: they get to secede, our national averages go up. (Don't forget to act sad when they go: "Hasta la vista Texas. I don't know how we'll get along without you.")
"Klaus is so dedicated to the chocolate business–he was at the factory all night helping to pack the fudge" –an actual line from St Elsewhere that somehow got past NBC Standards & Practices, ca 1985
Without the annual bribe to keep Egypt from invading Israel, how are those mideast peace talks going to go?
Will there be a proportional cut of the 'aid' money given to Israel to keep the peace talks on track?
Or Dick and Mary Jane, as the case may be.
I guess that electric-boots subsidy is probably not long for this world then.
Yay! The repugnicants are cutting spending to DC and its metro and amtrak and Obamacare!
I'm sure that's REALLY going to please their tea party base, who (after their rally in DC last year) complained that there weren't enough metro trains and other public transportation running often enough to accomodate them and their rascal scooters, and that DC should have been better prepared.
Fuck all this 2006 noise, I'm taking it back to '96. No, really, I'm moving back in with CalamityMom next weekend. 30 is the new 15.
They like Reagan. How about a Reagan-era budget? $1 trillion seemed like a huge national debt, back then.
Back to 2006 levels? Easy, just repeal Medicare Part D, abolish Homeland Security, and roll back every DoD increase. Also see if you can get a partial refund on that border fence.
Heh. They had the opportunity to start the ball rolling in California in November and screwed the pooch. When the people growing marijuana got it in their heads that legalized marijuana might take dollars out of their pockets, they did what it took to make sure that it wouldn't pass.
see, if egypt were less a 'middle east ally that we don't need to invade that isn't israel' and more a 'middle east trouble spot that we do need to invade' they wouldn't be getting their budget slashed.
really, it serves them right.
Again, why did we abolish debtors' prisons? Seems to me we could "insource" a lot of cheap labor that way. Win-win.
It's clearly a budget, it has a lot of numbers in it.
Pres. George W. Bush, May 5, 2000
1. Cut thousands of jobs
2. Say that you created thousands of jobs
3. ???
4. PROFIT!!!!!!!!
and Canajans will now have a fighter they also don't need…
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