Mirror, mirror

Remember when the president introduced his budget, and the Republicans got all high and mighty and decided they were going to introduce a budget too, so they came out and held up an 18-page booklet with no numbers or specific plans in it?

Yeah, I'm thinking that's about to happen again.

See, Obama on Wednesday let it be known that he was cutting $17 billion out of the budget that Congress has actually already passed. And just like they did a couple of weeks ago when he told his Cabinet secretaries to come up with $100 million in cuts, the Republicans all came out like banshees screeching that the cuts aren't enough.

No "good start," no "that's what I'm talkin' about" from the party of budget slashing, at least when they're in the minority. Just the usual NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO from the party of no.

Over the next couple of weeks, you'll have a chance to see what real budget cuts look like,

said House Minority Leader John Boehner -- the same House Minority Leader John Boehner who waved the little GOP budget thing around like it actually meant something. I think he said something similar then.

I don't know about you, but I'm beginning to think if Barack Obama came out and announced he was giving a $100,000 tax credit to any self-employed individual who bought a gas-guzzling, oversized vehicle that weighs more than three tons fully loaded, the GOP would scream bloody murder.

Nothing is good enough for these guys. They seem to not understand that it's gonna take a while to undo the damage they and their boy president did to our economy. They seem to have forgotten that Obama said he had his people going through the budget line by line, and it's a big damn budget. It's not all gonna get changed at once. And having Republicans go through the budget with a red pen makes about as much sense as, oh, I don't know -- maybe putting the former judges and stewards commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association in charge of FEMA.

Of course, some Republicans are starting to get it -- maybe. In what can only be a very bizarre turn of events, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-North Carolina -- who was only a few weeks ago leading one of Dick Armey's teabagging parties, stirring up the ill-informed by telling them of the outrageous tax burden they're forced to toil under because of Barack Obama.

But now, a mere three weeks later, McHenry is singing a different tune, telling Time magazine

Marginal tax rates are the lowest they've been in generations, and all we can talk about is tax cuts. The people's desires have changed, but we're still stuck in our old issue set.

And that's the truth. Tax rates are lower now than they were when Saint Ronnie was president. And they have been. Since Clinton.

But it's very strange to come out of the mouth of McHenry, an extremist conservative. I'm sure the Ayatollah Limbaugh will have something to say about it.

Maybe it was just an unguarded moment, or perhaps McHenry was suddenly overcome by the spirit of American democracy at its finest and had no choice but to tell the truth. And it's a truth that means the Republican party needs to be redesigning itself soon before some other party picks up the remnants of sanity the GOP has left in the ditches of its road to ruin and becomes a true opposition party.

But there's old Darth Cheney, saying it would be a mistake for Republicans to "moderate," because we all know that extremism is the best way to unite people.

You know, when you add all those things up, the idea that we ought to moderate basically means we ought to fundamentally change our philosophy. I for one am not prepared to do that, and I think most of us aren’t. Most Republicans have a pretty good idea of values, and aren’t eager to have someone come along and say, 'Well, the only way you can win is if you start to act more like a Democrat.'

Actually, Darth, the way you win is to start acting sane. The way you win is to act like you give a rat's ass about somebody other than yourself and your rich buds. The way you win is to stop wrapping yourself in an American flag and get your hands dirty with the real work to be done around here -- reinventing the country you nearly destroyed.

See, this isn't the land of soak 'em dry and get away while the gettin's good anymore. That's what November 4, 2008, meant. It meant a significant shift away from the era of trying to drown government in the bathtub so that the already rich can get even richer. It meant realizing that the playing field isn't level in this country, and never has been. It meant that a majority of voting Americans wanted to take steps to change what 30 years of conservative misrule had wrought.

Old Darth was right about one thing, though.

Some of the older folks who’ve been around a long time — like yours truly — need to move on and make room for that young talent that’s coming along,

he said. Too bad he doesn't realize that the ideas and attitude of those older folks need to move on too.

I suspect, though, that'll happen anyway. It's just that it's a lot harder when you don't do it willingly. And when you don't do it at all, well, progress doesn't stop if you do. Darth and the others, they stand a pretty good chance of being remembered, if they're remembered at all, as the folks who tried to remake America in their own image -- dark and secretive, bullying and abrasive. It almost worked.

We have a very long way to go to correct the errors of the past 30 years. And Obama isn't going to correct them all. Some of them, in fact, he's going to perpetuate. But he's not likely to send us spiraling back down that potholed path.

We may not know precisely where we're headed now -- but we know where we've been, and what a hellish, painful place that was. And we've got some pretty good ideas about where we need to be.

It'd just be so much easier if this shrill shell of a party would either remake itself for the 21st century, or get out of the way for a party that's ready for the future.

Either way, this Republican Party needs to stop peering into that magic mirror they got from all the closeted gay Republicans on their staffs and find one that'll give 'em a true reflection of what they've become.

Nah. I'm not holding my breath. Even accurate reflections can't sway the delusional.


News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press!

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

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Empty promises

So the Republicans hauled out their 18-page budget Thursday. Only they didn't actually have a budget.

House Minority Leader John Boehner had a little blue booklet that said "The Republican Road to Recovery" on the front.

He was mighty proud of himself, although a little birdie told me that the Republicans actually working on the budget would have preferred that he wait until they had one. Boehner's office said that wasn't true, and of course I believe them. I mean, he couldn't possibly have been wanting to hurry up and counter "the party of no" stuff, especially after Paul Begala said that GOP stood for "Got 0 Plans."

Two nights ago the president said, 'We haven't seen a budget yet out of Republicans.' Well, it's just not true because -- Here it is, Mr. President,

Boehner said, waving the little blue booklet around. But he wouldn't answer any real questions, like, how much is the GOP budget gonna cost, or how do you propose to reduce the deficit. He said we'd find out the details next week.

The guy who pretty much wrote the 18 pages of nothing, Rep. Paul Ryan, was there long enough to say "We're going to show a leaner budget, a budget with lower taxes, lower spending and lower borrowing" before scooting off without answering a single question.

And Rep. Mike "I'm so backwards you can call me ecneP ekiM" Pence said that he sure wished the Congress would adopt this booklet of emptiness but doubted that would happen, although he added that totally believes "that a minority in Congress plus the American people equals the majority."

Um, yeah, ekiM. But the American people voted for Obama. Oh, by the way, that's ecneP over there with his family and GW celebrating something about the Indianapolis Colts.

Anyway, inside the little blue booklet, the only numbers to be found are selected ones from the Obama budget, usually out of context and lacking some piece of information that would make things make more sense. Then there's some little piece of the the GOP plans to do.

Instead of recklessly borrowing and spending money on wasteful programs under the guise of 'stimulus' and 'investments,' Republicans seek to ensure that the federal budget cannot grow faster than families’ ability to pay the bill.

Whatever that means. I don't recall them saying anything like that when GW kept setting up "stimulus" bills that didn't do shit. This one at least does create some jobs, you know, as in work. All GW did was give us a few hundred bucks to pay toward our credit card bills.

Then there's stuff about "universal access to health care," which means that everybody has access to health care, but most of us can't actually afford it, and "entitlement reform," which means "We're going to gut Medicare and Social Security."

Next the Republicans will create jobs and lower taxes, by which they mean they'll allow corporations to export even more jobs overseas and cut taxes for rich people. "Instead of raising taxes on all Americans," the Republican "budget" lies, "Republicans seek to reduce the tax burden on working families and small businesses in order to create jobs and unlock private capital."

Oh, and "Republicans also want energy independence with increased development of all our natural resources, including renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar."

Next, the Republicans are going to "end the bailouts, protect taxpayers, and provide a transparent recovery process. Republicans support maintaining the cost of living after witnessing the booms
and busts triggered by loose monetary policy."

I have no idea what that means, other than the exact opposite of anything any Republican has ever done for 30 years.

And that's it. Not a single number, not a single concrete idea. I'm wondering how much it cost the Republicans to print up a full color booklet with nothing in it.

But there it is, Mr. President. The GOP budget.

Smoke and mirrors, just like Republican budgets have always been.


News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press Blog

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

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Budgeting a progressive future

Terence Heath, who blogs at his own Republic of T and at the Campaign for America's Future, announced Tuesday that he and Sara Robinson, who blogs at the Campaign for America's Future and sometimes at Orcinus, are launching a series at CAF "about the progressive values at the core of the president's budget, how to talk about it importance, and what progressives can do to pass the first truly progressive budget we've seen in decades."

That's exciting as hell. But that was at the end of the column. What Terence said before he got to that part was what really got to me.

Terence reminded me that we Americans -- most of us anyway -- don't really know what something truly progressive and new can look like. "The real transformation hasn't happened yet," he wrote.

People don’t yet have a tangible vision of something better than the past eight years or the current crisis. They have hope, but hope wears thin if people have nothing that they can see with their own eyes, hold in their hands, or experience in their own lives as evidence of the possibility of something better.

Quoting from "Ending Slavery" by Kevin Bales (about modern slavery), Terence wrote that

It was only when people began to have a vision of something better that they would rush toward change. He noted how it was only after reforms occurred or economic prosperity arrived that popular revolt began.

And in that passage, Bales was paraphrasing the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville -- author of "Democracy in America -- from a letter he wrote in 1853.

It is almost never when a state of things is the most detestable that it is smashed, but when, beginning to improve, it permits men to breathe, to reflect, to communicate their thoughts with each other, and to gauge by what they already have the extent of their rights and their grievances. The weight, although less heavy, seems then all the more unbearable.

That is just about where we are now, as Terence put it, "the anteroom of that transformational moment."

People are waking up, seeing what's been done to us for the last 30 years -- and particularly the last 8 -- and starting to grumble. Some of us are much more clear about what we're grumbling about, and some of us are just plain misguided about what we're grumbling about. But discontent is fast becoming the order of the day.

Now we need a direction, and the impetus to move in that direction. The president's budget may be just the ticket -- and you know the Republicans and the Blue Dawgs are gonna be fighting tooth and nail to limit what this budget can do. They've already started.

As Terence points out, this budget sings a new tune about America and its people. It's about an America whose people rely on one another, who work together, who cooperate -- who aren't out to see "what's in it for me." It is, he wrote, "a progressive budget that has at its core the understanding that government can and should have an important role in finding ways out of the current crisis and in reviving the economy."

More than that, it's a budget that recognizes that — rather than the 'You're on your own,' everyone-for-themselves conservative policy of the past 30 years — recovering from this crisis, reviving the economy, and thriving as families, communities, and as a nation means recognizing that we have some degree of responsibility to and for one another, because our faces are undeniably tied together.

That, itself, would be transformational. But first we have to offer more than more than a vision of something better. We have to make the beginnings of that vision, and the progressive values it embodies, felt in the lives of more Americans.

Now is our time to deliver. If we can turn progressive values into policies that make a real impact in the lives of every day people — whether it's jobs, health care, etc. — the transformation the country needs, and that the world needs us to make, will almost take care of itself.

This budget has its shortcomings. It can't possibly be all things to all people. But it is a world away from the policies of the past. We could do far worse than to pass it -- and frankly, letting it fail isn't an option. Not if we really, truly want to see the change many of us have been seeking.

It will happen, of course -- the transformation. As I've said before, it's just a question of whether we want to do it now, the hard way, or later -- maybe another generation later -- the excruciating painful way. As usual, the Republicans are looking at it through their own myopic lenses. What we're bequeathing to our children and grandchildren is not mountains of debt but a society that takes its strength from its people rather than the size of a handful of people's portfolios.

Either way, the time is right. It won't be easy. And it will likely be terrifying -- great change, real transformation always is. But the old ways have finally failed. They're on life support. They can continue that way for a while yet. But the end will come.

I'd rather pull the plug now and start the heavy lifting of change.

News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press Blog

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

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