This set of demands by the GOP Revolutionary Front, otherwise known as the House Republican caucus, should be read as a likely list of actual bills that will be passed -- with as little debate as possible -- in a blitz of legislative hardball in the early days of 2017 if Republicans sweep the 2016 elections:
On Tuesday, a House Appropriations subcommittee formally drafted legislation that would cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 34 percent and eliminate [President Obama's] newly announced greenhouse gas regulations. The bill cuts financing for the national endowments for the arts and the humanities in half and the Fish and Wildlife Service by 27 percent....Right now, because Democrats control the White House and (at least for another year and a half) the Senate, these are shots across the bow. In 2017, if Republicans win, they will be actual laws. And as I keep saying, don't assume it's impossible -- no Democrat other than Hillary Clinton ever beats the leading Republicans in 2016 polls, and Hillary could have a health crisis between now and then, or falter in 2016 the way she did in 2008. Or the public could shrug and decide it's "time for a change."
A House bill to finance labor and health programs, expected to be unveiled Wednesday, makes good on Republican threats to eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. [In the] labor and health measure ... education grants for poor students will be cut by 16 percent and the Labor Department by 13 percent, according to House Republican aides.
... The House transportation and housing bill for fiscal 2014 cuts from $3.3 billion to $1.7 billion the financing for Community Development Block Grants, which go mainly to large cities and urban counties for housing and social programs, largely for the poor. That level is below the number secured by President Gerald R. Ford when he created the program -- without adjusting for inflation.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, which has been flexing its muscle against hedge fund managers and insider trading schemes, would see financing cut 18 percent from the current level. Though Mr. Obama will finally get a fully operational National Labor Relations Board under a Senate agreement that forced Republicans to drop their filibuster of his three board nominees, House lawmakers are slashing spending on the board's operations.
Under other House legislation, the budget for the Internal Revenue Service would be cut by 24 percent, Amtrak would lose a third of its financing, and clean water grants from the Environmental Protection Agency would be slashed by 83 percent.
The 2016 Republican presidential candidate will not run on a "massive cuts to popular programs" platform. Some of this stuff will be in the candidate's budget blueprint, but the press will ignore the plain evidence in that budget and focus on trivialities. (See Hillary's wrinkles! Biden -- what a buffoon!) And many of the GOP's agenda items in 2017 will be bolts from the blue -- even people who were anticipating the worst won't have seen them coming.
As bad as the Democrats often are, Republicans are immeasurably worse. It's that simple.
4 comments:
Yup.
And if they win, we'll have a new "Platinumed Age," since gilding won't do justice to the rotten core we'll have, covered by a thin veneer of 0.001 wealthy and expensive platinum.
Amen, Steve. The GOP, with damn few exceptions, really should have as its motto: "Forward to the Gilded Age!": a return to the conditions prevailing under the sainted McKinley - sweep away any domestic legislation dated after 1904 or so, and pack federal courts with would-be Scalias to make it stick.
And most importantly it will be the Republicans last change to really mess up America so they go for it whole hog. Just adding a conservative judge or two to the Supreme Court would overturn a lot of laws.
I'm not entirely sure that Obama will finish his term.
Here in Texas, on a daily basis, I hear such incredible venom toward Obama coming from the wingnuts that it is really scary.
Granted, a lot of these wingnuts are chickenhawk cowards who are all talk. For example, for all Ted Nugent's violent rhetoric and all his professed admiration for guns, the man is basically a chickenshit coward who never served.
For all the extreme hatred I hear directed against Obama, with a lot of these wingnuts, it's all hot air.
However, there very well could be that one wingnut who does take up arms and decides to do something about the "Marxist in the White House."
Given the extreme anger and hatred directed at Obama that I hear here in Texas on a daily basis, it wouldn't surprise me if something terrible winds up happening. Some Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh-listening wingnut could one day snap and decide to "save" America.
Wouldn't surprise me at all.
Post a Comment