sigh...if only there were an alternative that didn't involve the democrats... http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110007283 -- We're All in the Same Bloat Republicans have abandoned small government. Why shouldn't voters abandon them? BY BRENDAN MINITER Tuesday, September 20, 2005 "After 11 years of Republican majority, we pared it down pretty good. I am ready to declare ongoing victory. It is still a process."--House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on the federal budget In the presidential campaign last year, Democrats were said to be counting on some misfortune--terrorists attacking on American soil, the Iraq War taking a turn for the worse, the economy going south--to help them beat George W. Bush. That didn't happen, of course. But now disaster has struck, and it's becoming increasingly clear that Democrats are better off for it. In ripping through the Gulf Coast, Hurricane Katrina has peeled back the lid on Republican rule and many Americans aren't happy with what they see. This isn't about a slow response anymore. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is on the ground, troops have restored order, and the water in New Orleans has long since begun to recede. President Bush and Republicans in Congress are now taking a hit not for when but rather how they have responded. And unless they change course, Republicans will pay a steep price in next year's midterm elections and leave Democrats in the driver's seat for 2008. What President Bush, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and other Republicans haven't figured out yet is that deficit spending isn't a problem for them unless it endangers the broader conservative agenda. If it does, it will become the electoral issue. And what we're seeing is that Katrina is swamping every goal conservatives have, from limiting government to cutting taxes to reforming entitlement programs. Katrina spending has already imperiled plans to repeal the death tax, and Congress is already $60 billion into a spending binge. Handing out $2,000 debit cards was just the beginning. The conservative Congress has brought back the welfare state. This isn't all Katrina's fault. Republicans have been kidding themselves for years that they are still the stewards of fiscal conservatism and limited government. The Medicare prescription drug plan is just one example. Run down the list of the some 80 federal entitlements--including Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, Pell Grants and so much more--and it becomes clear that little has been done to take these massive programs off of spending autopilot. Welfare reform and Freedom to Farm in the 1990s were nice, but what has the GOP done lately? In many cases Republicans have ramped up spending and then bragged about it. What we're seeing in the wake of Katrina is that despite all the winks and assurances to the contrary as they passed the energy and transportation bills, Republicans in Congress don't know how to control spending and are at a loss as to why they even should. That's one way to govern. But if Republicans no longer believe in smaller government, why not put the Democrats back in charge? None of this is say that Katrina has hurt all Republicans and helped all Democrats. Louisiana's Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans's Mayor Ray Nagin--both of whom have D's after their names--have clearly failed as crisis leaders. We can expect voters to give them the boot next time out. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may actually mark the storm as the turning point that gives her a shot at elective office. She has the good fortune of being from the wrong place at what's now the right time--Alabama, a state hit hard by the hurricane. Staring down critics who claim the president didn't rush to help Katrina victims because they were predominately poor and black has raised her national profile and fleshed out some of her views on race, poverty and education. Ms. Rice has gone domestic and surely is now on the short list to be any credible Republican presidential candidate's running mate. But why not Condi for president? She hasn't held elective office before, but if the nation comes under attack again, it's clear she has the backbone to do something about it. And that's about the only argument Republicans will have for continuing to be trusted with the reins of power after they jettison the rest of their agenda and adopt programs reminiscent of the New Deal and Great Society. Bankruptcy reform and a failed effort at Social Security reform just aren't enough to take to the voters, especially once the two Supreme Court vacancies are filled. As it happens, there is still an opportunity for Republicans in the ownership society. President Bush's idea of giving away federal land in the hard-hit areas is a step in the right direction, as are private $5,000 accounts that evacuees can use for job training and child care until they get back on their feet. A bolder step would be to move forward with private Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security accounts. Federal policies that encourage and facilitate owning assets--especially a home--enable individuals to get off of public assistance and will be embraced by even moderate voters. In the absence of such policies, however, conservatives will continue to be stampeded on spending. Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays.
Even idologues have to eventually except reality. There is no free lunch. YOu can't cut taxes and raise government revenue. You can't keep cutting maintenance on infrasturcutre like levees and not eventually pay a price. You can't have war without cost. (Remember how we were just going to take Iraqi oil or something so the war would more or less cost free). Private enterprise can't do some things or it does them less efficiently than government e.g. health insurance for instance or feeding the troops when it is dangerous to go near the battle site and feed them. Sighhhhhhhh. Welcome to reality.
The Poor Shamed Us Into Seeing Them by Janet Pelz * Hurricane Katrina showed us faces the Republicans never wanted us to see -- the elderly, the infirm, the poor. The ones with no car to get them out of the city before the storm hit, the ones unable to pay for hotel rooms until the waters receded. The ones with no health insurance to recover from the ravages of insulin shock, kidney failure or dehydration. The ones lying face down in the cesspool or dying of heatstroke in the Superdome. These are the people the Republicans have been teaching us to disdain, if not hate, since President Reagan decried the moral laxness of the Welfare Mom. And for the past 25 years, they've been successful. As long as the poor remained out of sight, they could be described in whatever undeserving light the Republicans chose, and the rest of us would be unwilling to challenge them. This second Bush administration was to be the conservatives' crowning glory. They would finish slicing government to the bone, sacrificing environmental protections, critical infrastructure investments, health and human services, all to massive tax cuts. Yes, the long climb back from the precipice of the New Deal was within reach. That is, until the poor came out of hiding and shamed us into seeing them. The neoconservatives had sold us their theory -- each of us should take care of ourselves. Citizens (at least those morally upstanding enough to be wealthy) could do better for ourselves than the government could do for us. They touted the ownership society, where we privatize our own piece of Social Security. They advocated that each of us pay for our own health care rather than requiring our employers to contribute. They rejected environmental regulation at the expense of what we could do with our own property. Their theory works just fine for the families sheltering multimillion-dollar estates for their children. It works for Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, who will rebuild that one home destroyed in the hurricane. But for those who work full time for Wal-Mart, receiving minimum wage with no health or other benefits, their theory is as sound as the Lake Pontchartrain levee. It is the faces of these Wal-Mart workers, janitors and child care providers, however, that we watched during the past weeks. They were the ones desperate for someone to pull them off the roof, get help for their neighbor, reunite them with children they put in a helicopter gurney. It was these people, whose black faces may not be the color of our own, whose English may not be as refined. We can't ignore that their fear, their devotion to family and their outrage in government is the same as ours. That's why their presence on television is so threatening to the Republicans' agenda. We can't hate those who are as worthy, as human, as we. Yes, the response for this natural disaster was shameful. But the man-made disaster that put these American citizens in the vulnerable position of becoming the hurricane's victims is that much more shameful. The poor in this country deserve more than a contribution to the Red Cross. They deserve a government that gets them not just off the roof but also out of the margins of American society and into the sun that shines on the rest of us. http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0919-26.htm
sure you can, it's been done by reagan and bush. the problem in this case is spending is completely out of control. taxes are down, revenue is up, but spending is WAY up.
A lobbyist, on his way home from work in Washington, D.C., came to a dead halt in traffic and thought to himself, "Wow, this seems worse than usual." He noticed a police officer walking between the lines of stopped cars, so he rolled down his window and asked, "Officer, what's the hold-up?" The officer replied, "The President is depressed, so he stopped his motorcade and is threatening to douse himself with gasoline and set himself on fire. He says no one believes his stories about why it took solong to get Federal help to New Orleans after the hurricane, why we went to war in Iraq, the connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda, or that his tax cuts will help anyone except his wealthy friends. So we're taking up a collection for him." The lobbyist asks, "How much have you got so far?" The officer replies, "About 14 gallons, but a lot of folks are still siphoning!"
basso, as a fiscal conservative, if you were a constituent of House of Representative Don Young (a Republican), who as the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee just scooped huge amounts of federal tax dollars to benefit his own congressional district in Alaska, would you still vote for him in the next election?
Umm, revenues in 2004, not even accounting for inflation (which would make the difference even more), were lower than they were in 2000 - and that includes just a 6 month recession and 3+ years of economic growth. http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1821&sequence=0 Taxes are down and revenues are down.
Wouldn't the sheer size of the pork-barrel spending alone be an overwhelming factor here (assume you are not a beneficiary of the pork)?
It always amazes me how these types of articles only come out when republicans hold forms of high level office. Just remember people....."Perspective is Everything!" This statement is the very reason why those people who the media chose to focus on are where they are.....dependant on the government.
This is a good read from the Washington Post. I saw the headline on this thread and just knew it was the best place to post this. At this rate, there are going to be a lot of "welfare" Republicans... looking at life from the welfare side of things, up close and personal: Whose Fault Is Pork? Sunday, October 2, 2005; B06 THE HUGE EXPANSION of government overseen by the supposed party of small government has provoked a conservative backlash. The Heritage Foundation, which is usually respectful of Republican Party officeholders, recently noted that the party's ascendancy has coincided with an extraordinarily expensive Medicare prescription drug bill, the most costly farm bill in modern history, a 51 percent increase in spending on veterans and an increase in the annual number of pork projects from 6,000 in 2001 to 14,000 this year. Rank-and-file Republican House members are fed up with this unconservative record; on Wednesday they rebelled against Majority Leader Tom DeLay's scheme to have a big-spending ally keep his throne warm while he fights a criminal indictment. But the conservative revolt should logically be taken a step further. It should target President Bush. When they are at their most timid, which means frequently, critics of government profligacy are content to blame "the system." They point to the pressures on members of Congress to grasp for favors for their districts. They invoke the old truth that special interests hire lobbyists to fight for subsidies while the public that pays for them goes unrepresented on K Street. But blaming systemic forces for political cronyism is like blaming crime on societal forces such as poverty. It's part of the explanation, but it isn't the whole one. Conservatives should know this better than anybody, since they believe most ardently in personal responsibility. Who should be held responsible for runaway government spending? Mr. DeLay is certainly a good place to start. His governing principle was not to stand on principle but rather to rain taxpayers' money on every lobby that could return the favor with campaign contributions. But the biggest responsibility lies not with any member of the legislature but with Mr. Bush. Unlike senators and House members, the president represents the whole nation; he is supposed to defend the general interest against particularist claims. Moreover, he has the power to do so. If Congress serves up wasteful bills, the president can veto them. Mr. Bush has been too cowardly to do that. He is the first president since John Quincy Adams to have served a full term without once exercising his veto, and his second term has so far been no different. This summer Mr. Bush promised to veto the transportation bill if it cost more than $256 billion. His threat brought the bill's size down quite a bit, but in the end he caved and signed a package that cost $295 billion. Why did he blink? Doesn't his administration pride itself on defending the power and prerogatives of the presidency? Mr. Bush's father had the courage to veto 44 bills in four years, and President Ronald Reagan once vetoed a transportation bill because it contained about 150 pork projects. But the bill that Mr. Bush just signed contained at least 6,000 pork projects. The president's defenders plead that it's hard to veto bills when his own party controls Congress. But as the conservative commentator Bruce Bartlett points out, this defense is nonsense. President Franklin D. Roosevelt held office at a time of huge Democratic Party majorities in Congress, but that didn't stop him from vetoing a record 635 bills. Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter also coexisted with large Democratic majorities, yet Kennedy vetoed 21 bills during his short presidency, Johnson vetoed 30 and Carter vetoed 31. The truth is that there is nothing to stop Mr. Bush from wielding his veto -- witness the fact that the administration threatened Friday to veto a defense bill if, among other potential offenses, it contained language outlawing cruel and inhuman treatment of foreign detainees. But while Mr. Bush cares fervently, and scandalously, about the imperative of keeping inhumane practices legal, he does not care as much about waste of taxpayers' money. This is why he has not made vigorous use of his veto to restrain the growth of pork. This is why an anti-spending backlash that focuses only on Mr. DeLay is missing its main target. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/01/AR2005100100944.html Keep D&D Civil.
Just a question I'm no economist But how does the government gets money/Revenue . .beyond Taxes? Rocket River
