Last September I referred to the tea party (TP) as a New Puritanism. At the time I said, "That is, it (the TP) has a package of grievances it perceives as threats to our governmental and fiscal future and moral values. In political terms, this translates to 'if you want our support, you must accept and endorse the entire package or we'll fight against you.' " The posting referred to GOP Senator Scott Brown as an example of how the TP turns against you if you don't conform to its agenda.
That litmus test of the TP now seems to have a wider application in the Republican party on the issue of the so-called Ryan budget. This is the budget of Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, whose plan passed the House earlier this spring and has become the official budget plan of the party. If you presume to oppose that budget plan or any part of it, you are some kind of evil doer. The example here is Newt Gingrich who had the temerity to refer to Ryan's proposal on medicare as "right wing social engineering". His words were hardly spoken when he was castigated by fellow Republicans. In a rather wimpy fashion, Gingrich quickly apologized for his blasphemy to Ryan, but it was too late. In the parlance of the day, the bullet had already left the gun and Gingrich's newly launched presidential campaign was quickly in trouble.
Senator Brown, already cast into outer darkness by the TP, faces a similar outcome with many of his fellow Republicans. He said he would not support the Ryan budget on medicare if or when it came before the Senate. Again, it was "for shame". Brown is not expected to be alone in his dissent. Other Republican Senators expected to vote "no" are Snowe and Collins of Maine and perhaps Murkowski of Alaska who seems to have become more independent since her bitter primary election victory of TP candidate Joe Miller last year.
Such GOP objections to the medicare part of the Ryan/GOP budget is not surprising since many Republicans have created some distance between themselves and Ryan's plan to replace traditional medicare with a voucher system that would subsidize the purchase of health care insurance from private insurers. When members of Congress went home for the Easter recess, they found that senior voters and others in their districts/states were strongly opposed to the abolition of medicare as it has operated for the last 45 years, even though those over age 55 would be grandfathered into the present system.
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Speaking of congressional recesses. Barely back from the Easter recess, the Senate, according to its online calender will go home again for Memorial Day, from May 30-June 5. While I am certainly not an admirer of TP Senator Rand Paul, you can't help but applaud his sentiment that he feels like he should be giving back his pay because the Senate never does any work.
While both chambers are enjoying lots of home time, the task of working out a debt limit/deficit spending deal has been left to the administration for leadership. The bipartisan Senate Gang of 6 who had been trying for months to work out a budget agreement seems to have fallen apart, leaving the problems of the debt ceiling and spending cuts to Vice President Biden and a small bipartisan group of House and Senate members.
The big question is, aren't there other pressing national issues that need attention in Congress which continues primarily to play gotcha politics to politically embarrass one party or the other. A recent example was the easily forcasted Senate Republican rejection of a Democratic proposal to end $21 billion in tax benefits received by the five major oil companies. The Senate Democrats were then quick to reject, as expected, a Republican counter proposal to increase oil drilling as a means of reducing reliance on foreign oil imports. The same Senate gotcha game may be just ahead on the Ryan and Obama budgets although the Byzantine politics of the Senate may come up with a way to avoid embarrassing partisan votes by both sides.
Meanwhile, the public can continue to wonder what exactly the Congress has accomplished in the last five months, except for its recesses. Some easily agreed upon stuff perhaps, but the difficult issues like immigration, job creation, and major education amendments are nowhere to be seen.
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With all of the congressional wind gusts linking debt ceiling and spending cuts, there doesn't seem to be much talk about ending the $6 billion tax subsidy to the ethanol industry which has been absorbing an increasing share of the nation's corn crop thanks to congressional mandates to produce more and more of the stuff. Of course, in the process of eating up more and more corn for ethanol, the politically well placed corn farmers see the price of corn continually rising. And, of course, the consumers at the bottom of the political food chain have seen the rise in the price of things such as pork, beef, and chicken which are dependent upon corn for feed.
So when does ending the ethanol subsidy get on the congressional calender? Maybe after some distant recess.
I think the title needs a few more expletives (!!#%&). There are a lot of other pressing national issues such as the economy, jobs! I will be more impressed with Rand Paul if he actually does return the money. It is easy to express the sentiment knowing you're probably not going to be called to task for it, but I do applaud that he at least recognizes the issue of pay without work. It is appalling that congress gets so much time off and paid so well for it, especially when there are so many pressing issues facing the country - jobs, housing, immigration reform, medicare....
ReplyDeleteThe bipartisian politics has got to stop at some point and common sense needs to prevail. The republicans rejecting the Democratic proposal to end $21 billion in tax benefits received by the five major oil companies is horrendous and the Democrats needs to lighten up on the anti drilling mentality. We need to quit being dependent on foreign oil and they're only hurting the southern economy which is unbelievable given the shape of the economy as it is.
Obama was going to take 1/2 trillion dollars out of medicare with the new health care act, but that isn't spoken of anymore. At least Paul Ryan is trying to save medicare somehow for future generations. If it isn't the best plan I don't hear anyone else proposing something else to save it. And the medi(scare) tactics with the pushing granny over the ledge needs to stop. Anyone over 55 will not be affected. That is not hard to understand. At least we ought to only be seeing the younger generation at the protect meetings.
And finally, the ehtanol subsidy is a travesty! There are so many things wrong with it including rising food prices in a time when a lot of people are unemployed.
Sheila
ReplyDeleteA clear pattern has emerged in your comments and my responses. We are agreeable to disagreeing.
You're right about the need for more expletives, but it's not as easy to depict cussing on the computer as it is in a comic strip. Now for some shadings of disagreement.
On the drilling issue, Obama has proposed opening up some new drilling areas but that came at about the same time as the drilling rig blowing up and the proposal got caught up in the safety issue. One of the major points against the GOP "drill, baby, drill" mantra is that there are many existing leases held by the oil companies that have not yet been used. The GOP proposal, which they bring up from time to time, was more the second shoe dropping in the gotcha politics now being played in Congress. To get even with the Democrats for bringing up the vote to end the $21 billion in tax breaks to big oil, the Republicans trotted out their drilling proposal.
The basic Democratic alternative to Ryan's abolition of medicare for those under age 55 is that cutting medicare costs should be dealt with as the better approach. (For myself, I would increase the medicare payroll tax by a half percentage point, raise the deductible, and increase copayments as a start.) But any Democratic alternative to Ryan has not yet been put together and presented. But something worth noting. A big piece of total medicare costs is the Part D prescription plan passed in 2003 and which went into effect in 2006. In 2008, Part D cost about $50 billion with a projected total cost of $725 billion over the next decade. These costs would be lower if the federal government was permitted to bargain with the drug companies on prices and if cheaper Canadian drugs could be brought in. When the law as passed in 2003, Bush and the GOP-controlled Congress prohibited both.
Believe we might hear more on the ethanol subside as the politics heats up. We are more likely to hear from a few of the presidential wannabes rather than from Congress which gets involved in trading ethanol votes for such things as food stamp votes.