Category: Budget

by Smitty

So the House GOP broke on Plan B. This is telling, emphasis mine:

Upstairs by the House floor, which was now closed after Boehner’s announcement, a handful of senior members discussed the whip count. They decided to go out for drinks near Union Station, in order to avoid their colleagues who’d be hanging at the Capitol Hill Club on the House side. “I don’t want to talk to the people who ruined this, at least right now,” a retiring House member told me. “They don’t get it.” Another senior member told me that Boehner was always going to struggle with the whip count since most House conservatives have little interest in seeing the speaker strike any kind of deal. “Boehner was trying to play chess and the caucus was playing checkers,” he said, sighing. “Boehner is willing to lose a pawn for a queen. I’m not sure about the rest.”
Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, a conservative with libertarian leanings, was stunned. As he walked back to his office, he said the episode was unfortunate, even though he was planning to vote against the measure. For the past month, since House leaders booted him off the budget committee, he has been railing against Boehner for his management style. But even Amash wondered whether the House GOP was making the right move. “Too many people in there were arguing that this thing is a tax increase, and I don’t think that’s what Boehner was trying to do,” he said. As much as he disagrees with Boehner’s approach, even he regretted how the speaker’s plan was killed.

If you’re in a military situation, and everyone is under the UCMJ, then the authoritarian mode is far more workable. You can toss out the “Because I said so” argument, and toss malingerers under the bus.

It isn’t clear in politics that you can play it that way. There is nothing whatsoever in the Fiscal Cliff debate that is of a national security nature. Boehner really ought to have been playing chess, and not poker. Truly, the seeds of most evils are planted with cards held close to the chest. Thus, if Boehner is unhappy with the results, Boehner can blame Boehner. This country has been producing chips from nowhere and piling them on the table for these decades, and the table is collapsing under the weight of the idiocy.

It is, in fact, time to return to chess, with all the pieces on the table in plain view. The Republican Party, if interested in turning around both its and the country’s decline, ought to consider a full reform platform, and start selling it to voters for the 2014 election. Something that admits that the last century of collapse into a single Progressive uber-State is a pair of deuces that thinks itself a royal flush. Something that builds upon ideas, e.g. Barnett’s Bill of Federalism, that redistribute power, not wealth.

The Republican Party has to be more than Gasping Obama Patsies to make a difference.

Via amyvrwc

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Charles Krauthammer on the negotiations: “Robert E. Lee was offered easier terms at Appomattox, and he lost the Civil War.”

What’s interesting is how President Obama is arguing that the election was a referendum in favor of what he calls his “balanced approach” to deficit reduction — i.e., increased taxes on the rich — but his bargaining position in these negotiations is entirely unbalanced: Not only is he refusing to budge an inch on entitlement spending, he actually wants more deficit “stimulus” spending and unlimited authority to increase the debt ceiling.

In other words, as Krauthammer suggests, Obama’s “negotiations” are actually a demand for unconditional surrender. Is this really what Americans voted for on Nov. 6? Ace of Spades sees tyrrany:

Obama is a tyrant.  If Republicans do not lift the debt ceiling, it is perfectly obvious what he will do, as he’s argued for it before:  Like Putin, he will begin unilaterally asserting power he doesn’t have.

Maybe this is what the 52% who voted for Obama really wanted, a Dictatorship of Hope. On the other hand, Jennifer Rubin thinks Republicans are handling the negotiations well:

For now, however, Senate and House Republicans are playing it right. They have even got the mainstream media to notice how unreasonable Obama’s non-offer, offer is. (“no concessions“). Some even recognized that the president’s “offer” in response to the Republicans’ move on revenue was identical to his post-election opening bid.
In their own ways, Sen. Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the past couple of days rather expertly. McConnell’s reaction to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s ludicrous proposal — laughter — was exactly right. It is a joke, and rather than railing at specific parts, a guffaw nicely communicates to voter how un-serious the president is at this point.
Likewise Boehner’s more-in-sadness-than-in-anger tone after his call with Obama keeps his party from becoming unhinged and keeps a respectful dialogue with the president.

Not really a big fan of “respectful dialogue with the president,” but whatever. The game here is that each side is trying to make the other side seem unreasonable, to affix blame in advance if the whole thing goes sideways. The problem for Republicans is that the media will blame them, no matter how unreasonable Democrats may be. There is thus no possibility of making this a political victory for the GOP, and since the only alternative seems to be knuckling under and giving Obama everything he wants, neither is there any realistic hope of a policy victory.

So, how are those internal polls working out for you, Neil Newhouse? I mean, we’re dealing with the inevitable consequences of defeat. Scapegoating John Boehner and Mitch McConnell for “weakness” in the fiscal-cliff negotations is really just a way of blaming Republican congressional leaders for the defeat of the Republican presidential candidate, and that is neither fair nor pragmatic.

Elections matter. We lost. We’re screwed. Happy Holidays.

In terms of newsworthiness, it might be a clever idea to have, say, Brad Pitt and Anne Hathaway stage a naked protest in Harry Reid’s office, demanding action to reduce out-of-control federal spending. On the other hand, it’s hard to see the logic of sending out a bunch of ugly freaks to harass John Boehner about their pet boondoggle:

Seven naked protesters swarmed the office of Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Tuesday for some 20 minutes of loud chanting against cuts to AIDS funding.
Among their chants: “Boehner, Boehner, don’t be a dick, budget cuts will make us sick.” And: “Fight AIDS. Act up. Fight back.” And: “End AIDS with the Robin Hood tax, no more budget cuts on our back.” And: “Budget cuts are really rude, that’s why we have to be so lewd.”

The ugly freaks got a blip of publicity that didn’t do much to explain what they were actually protesting about. However, one photo showed a protester with the phrase “Fund HOPWA” painted on his torso, and a bit of Googling identifies the acronym: Housing Opportunities for People With AIDS, a 20-year-old program under the federal department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), with a budget of more than $300 million a year.

Exactly why the federal government has a program to provide housing for AIDS sufferers but not, say, people with herpes or chlyamida, can only be explained in terms of identity politics. Over the past 30 years, clever organizers have succeeded in making AIDS a propaganda sledgehammer with which to bludgeon politicians. “AIDS funding” includes a vast category of government spending, of which HOPWA is a classic example, that is considered sacrosanct because anyone who doesn’t support it will be slammed as a heartless homophobe.  In September, the White House released a report from the Office of Management and Budget describing plans for budget sequestration:

According to page 98 of the very official and incredibly dense report, HOPWA is slated to lose 8.2% of its funding, or $27 million should the sequestration take place. In very real terms, since HUD calculated that for every $1 million of funding, 192 households are served, the sequester would mean the loss of housing assistance to 5,184 households. In addition, outside of HOPWA reductions, according to calculations from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, “More than 185,000 households would lose their tenant-based rental assistance vouchers, 92,400 households would lose their project-based rental assistance housing, and 145,900 people would be remain homeless, instead of being housed under the Homeless Assistance Grant program. In addition, more than 140,000 currently housed households that include an elderly person or a person with a disability would receive reduced unit maintenance and lower levels of supportive services in units funded by Section 202 Housing for the Elderly or Section 811 Housing for People with Disabilities.”

In other words, it’s about money — tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants — and the people who get that money are insisting that they won’t give up one red cent of it, despite the fact that the federal government is headed toward bankruptcy.  As far as I’m concerned, HOPWA belongs in the same “Stuff We Can’t Afford Anymore” category as Big Bird and the National Endowment for the Arts.

BTW, apologies to anyone mystified by my 24-hour absence from the Internet. Don’t believe those crazy rumors that I was arrested for staging a naked protest against federal funding for Auburn University.