« Because I'm Busy and You're Here | Main | Un-Lovely Rita »
September 17, 2005
Brick Walls and Headaches
You'd think that after seeing this month just how dire the costs of a tax-slashing, cut-spending-on-everything-except-Halliburton-contracts economic plan can be, George W. Bush might be chastened into reassessing his post-Katrina plans for rebuilding not only the Gulf Coast, but America. You'd think the man would be smart enough and practical enough to deviate from his Little Red Book-styled adherence to the Grover Norquist school of running a country. You'd think that seeing devastation with his own eyes might rouse Bush from inaction and keep him from making the problems worse.
You'd be wrong.
Unbelievably, despite the direct connection between cuts in FEMA spending for levee upkeep and Katrina's devastating impact on New Orleans, Bush still hasn't learned a thing. His recovery plan for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast involves no tax increases, but plenty more ... wait for it... spending cuts.
"It'’s going to cost whatever it’s going to cost, and we're going to be wise about the money we spend," Bush said a day after laying out an expensive plan for rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast without spelling out how he would pay for it. "The key question is to make sure the costs are wisely spent and that we work with Congress to make sure that we are able to manage our budget in a wise way, and that is going to mean cutting other programs," he added.
Looking beyond the fact that Repubicans have spent decades complaining that Democrats' big proposals never included specifics on how to pay for the grandiose programs they envisioned (which makes this high hypocrisy in a rhetorical sense), we now have the president of the United States demonstrating himself to be such a programmed tool of the Norquist school that not even the reality of death and devastation can jar him from the mantra. Spending cuts in favor of other priorities, forced by sharp decreases in tax revenue due to cuts that overwhelmingly favored the wealthy, contributed to the failure of New Orleans' levees. What's he going to cut to pay for New Orleans -- surveillance and protection of New York's economic targets or Washington's political ones?
We already have a $300 billion budget deficit (n.b.: Bush inherited a surplus from Clinton), and the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast could equal that amount. And yet apparently, George W. Bush is incapable of even considering a tax increase to cover these unforseen costs.
I remember the Contract On -- I mean, Contract "With" -- America that the Repubicans rode to power in 1994. Their very first tenet was that a balanced budget was critical to our long term economic stability, and was in fact every American's right to expect of our elected officials. After ten years of Republican control, that philosophy has obviously faded from existence, replaced with unyielding adherence to tax-cuts dogma no matter the price the country has to pay. It's a sad decline, really. Not just for the so-called "party of Lincoln," but for the rest of us who live under their regime and have to live with the consequences.
What am I suggesting? Despite Republicans' 20 year campaign to paint Democrats as undisciplined, irresponsible big spenders who never met a tax increase they didn't like, I'm not a fan of giant programs funded by en masse tax increases. That said, I don't see how the Gulf Coast gets rebuilt without tax increases to cover the cost -- especially when we're also paying for an irresponsible, ill-conceived war that we were lied to and tricked into entering. It's not like we can pretend Katrina's aftermath is business-as-usual or situation normal. This was an emergency, an unforseen (though not unavoidable, Mr. FEMA spending cuts) disaster with which we must now deal. And just like extenuating circumstances force you and I to make adjustments we'd prefer not to have made (like taking out a consumer loan, for example, or putting a large sum on a credit card), extenuating circumstances are forcing our government into having to take care of its people by doing something it may prefer not to do.
Or at least, they ought to be forcing the government to do so. Unfortunately, the Bush administration appears to prefer continued pandering to its base over actually taking care of the people Bush swore an oath to protect.
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.thechroniccurmudgeon.com/cgi-bin/mt/mtb.cgi/2
Comments
It shocked the H out of me when he actually assumed responsibility for the response effort. I think had it been a year earlier when this occurred, he wouldve scrambled to blame others as to not tarnish his image during election year. This is the most sorry A'd excuse for a for positive action yet.
In 2001 he claimed cost was not an issue for the war on terror, that we would use what ever resources available to recover from 9/11 and begin a military campaign against the enemy.
Today he finds himself strapped to his miscaculated prior actions at a time when the people who pay these taxes need the money spent on them and not on foreign relations, or war contracts for his campaign contributors, and there is none.
Its like an auto-mechanic who spent all his paycheck to install turbos, instead of maintaining the brake lines.
Posted by: Cuzin Jose at September 17, 2005 02:36 PM
He has no freaking clue what the hell he is doing.
Here is a Administration that hates Big Government and yet is creating Big Government programs and problems left and right without consideration about how to pay for them. And just wait until they start dismantling these very programs they created because they are "Big Government Programs"
That's the CEO mentality of running a company. Let's just shift the blame off to someone else just so long as I get my golden parachute and screw the people who actually have to work.
Posted by: jillian at September 17, 2005 07:38 PM
On the other hand, there's plenty of meaningless federal government spending that could easily be cut -- all the pork barrel homeland security cash going to Alaskan ports, for instance. If they partially paid for Katrina rebuilding by cutting the BS spending, then I'd board their train -- at least in theory.
Posted by: Brent at September 18, 2005 12:26 PM
It's one thing to engage in badinage with all of these youngsters, but this kind of thing can be so easily misunderstood.
M
Posted by: M at September 23, 2005 06:03 AM
M - man, start dropping in jokes into this place where no one else gets our sources... well, if could cause trouble.
I mean... if I answer that question you keep askin' me... if I give you the name of the Big Enchilada, y'know... then it's bon voyage, Mudge - I mean like poimanent. I mean like a bullet in my head. You dig? You're a mouse fighting a gorilla. Arby's is as dead as that crab meat. The government's still breathing. You want to line up with a dead man?
Posted by: Curmudgeon at September 23, 2005 07:00 AM
I'm sorry, I'm going to have to detain you for further questioning by the FCC. I find your blog to be simply unbelievable.
M
Posted by: M at September 23, 2005 09:30 PM
Really? Which part?
Posted by: Curmudgeon at September 23, 2005 10:02 PM
I got nothin' but time, Curmudgeon. Time's just standing still here - like a snake, sunnin' itself on the road...
Posted by: M at September 24, 2005 11:22 AM
