This is going to hurt you more than it's going to hurt me

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S

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 03:41:27 EDT

This is going to hurt you more than it's going to hurt me

 

 

 

 

This is going to hurt you more than it's going to hurt me

 

As Think Progress notes today, the $200 billion the federal government

may need to pay for Hurricane Katrina could be covered entirely -- and

then some -- by simply rolling back the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the

wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.

 

As we reported yesterday, House Republicans have another way to come

up with the money: They want to carve $500 billion in spending out of

the federal budget. How would they do it? Their " Operation Offset "

plan is available online now and it's full of brave talk about the

" tough choices " that will be required in these " tough times. " We'll

acknowledge that some of the choices listed therein are, in fact,

pretty tough: If you don't want to roll back tax cuts for

millionaires, you're going to have to tell Republican Rep. Don Young

why he can't have his $200 million bridge to nowhere and America's

seniors why they need to wait an additional year for help with their

prescriptions.

 

But somehow, we get the idea that the House Republicans' plan isn't

quite as painful -- for them, at least -- as they'd like to make it

out to be. Like the Heritage Foundation, the House Republicans

apparently see in Katrina an opportunity to advance some of their

favorite policy goals and make some cuts that won't exactly bring

tears to the eyes of the religious right or the corporate interests

who support them. Some examples:

 

The Republicans would freeze funding for the Peace Corps, the Global

AIDS Initiative, U.N. peacekeeping operations and a wide variety of

third-world development programs; eliminate the EnergyStar program,

eliminate grants to states and local communities for energy

conservation, reduce federal subsidies for Amtrak, eliminate funding

for new light-rail programs and cancel the president's hydrogen fuel

initiative; eliminate state grants for safe and drug-free schools

because " studies show that schools are among the safest places in the

country and relatively drug free " ; and eliminate the teen funding

portion of Title X, which provides " free and reduced-price

contraceptives, including the IUD, the injection drug Depo-Provera,

and the morning-after pill " to poor teenagers.

 

Along the way, they'd find a way to punish -- or simply eliminate --

some of their enemies, real and imagined. They'd cut funding for the

District of Columbia, eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public

Broadcasting, eliminate subsidized student loans for graduate

students, terminate the Legal Services Corporation, eliminate funding

for the National Endowment for the Arts and kill the National

Endowment for the Humanities.

 

Of course, you can't balance the budget on the backs of PBS viewers,

grad students and other outside-the-mainstream liberals alone. So the

Republican plan also calls for " rational reforms to Defense and

Homeland Security. " Does this mean cutting weapons systems at the

expense of big defense corporations? Well, no. But it does mean

closing schools for the children of soldiers, cutting grants for local

responders and offering National Guard members the " option " to

purchase a less comprehensive healthcare plan.

 

We've all got to do our part. Or at least 99 percent of us do.

 

-- Tim Grieve

 

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog