The House of Usher

My best advice to House Republicans is--let President Obama cut the budget he actually knows what he is doing.

Yesterday's budget announcement by Hal Rogers was met in Washington with jeers and boos. The Washington Post noted that the Republicans cut anything that would have created a job and not only that but they didn't slash the deficit as advertised. They basically wiped out their own cuts through an unnecessary and unwanted increase in defense spending.

Pete DeFazio (D-Oregon) took to the House floor yesterday to ridicule the cuts proposed by the GOP. His bottom line was that the deficit is terrible so let's cut what is wasteful and unneeded. So out of his hat he proposed cutting the farm subsidies to unproductive farms and the oil tax credits. He pointed out that Exxon/Mobil's quarterly profits were the largest of any country in the history of the world and they pay no taxes in the United States. The total savings from DeFazio's modest suggestion would be around $45 billion and surpass the total the GOP's cuts.

The Republican Study Group, which houses the extreme right of the party, vowed to war with the House leadership for further cuts.

Meanwhile, Rachel Maddow seems to have stumbled onto the story of the House follies as a new unfolding story. Last night she pointed to the fact that 4 out of five bills brought to the floor by the GOP were defeated, including the bill to cut UN funding. To explain this strange phenomenon she brought back Michael Steele, who she has rehabilitated. Actually, the two of them together make for good television. What she quizzed Steele about was his statement months earlier that the GOP might not be ready to govern. Steele gamely tried to explain the GOP needed to get its sealegs. But his explanation was wholly inadequate. Maddow is intuitively onto to something about the chaos of the GOP controlled House.

The failure to pass the Patriot Act, the UN de-funding is simply unbelieveable when you realize that the House leadership generally doesn't bring a bill to the floor unless they know they have the votes. You don't simply allow votes just to say you did them--even in teabag nation. If you remember the nail-biting votes on healthcare and financial reform,it was widely and accurately reported that Nancy Pelosi wouldn't allow the bill on the floor unless she knew she had the votes. And there she liked to have about a 6 vote wiggle room. Here it seems you have a basic organizational breakdown with the GOP. After all they have an overwhelming majority. Their Whip is not whipping. No one seems to be home. They can't count.

Another aspect of the House chaos is this very strange phenomenon of bills, including their proposed budget,not going through committee. In other words,there was no staff work on the budget proposal except for the ideological desires of the leadership and some right-wing staffers. While Rogers could hype the cuts as the largest budget cuts ever--I doubt it--there was no there there. Already the corporate masters are starting to voice disagreements with the budget proposals. After all, if you hire your chiefs of staff from corporate lobby shops, you should at least use them to strengthen your budget approach. Apparently, this is no longer true. And if not corrected, what we will see is more mayhem.

Michael Steele knew better than to argue that the Republicans hadn't been in control for awhile. It was only 4 years ago they had the House. The talent is there to find people who actually know how to write laws if they cared to.

A writer from the Center for American Progress posted an op-ed on Huffington Post that details how a budget is supposed to be made and what House members don't understand. There exists a basic mechanics to appropriations, which has to be understood just to recognize the meaning of the budget you write. Apparently,House Republicans have just thrown the laws of economics out the window.

One of the weirder hearings was Ron Paul's on the role of the Fed. Before we heard from Bernanke, who was appointed by George W after all, we heard the new ideological voices of the GOP. First witness up was Thomas DiLorenzo, revisionist historian who wrote a biography of Abraham Lincoln portraying him as a tyrant and despot. DiLorenzo also serves as an adviser to an organization that supports secession--like today not just a cheerleader for the old confederacy. When pressed on this by the Democrats, he said that "Oh that, that was last year." So will the Right forgive Barack Obama for having a coffee in his first campaign over at Bill Ayers' house? Puh-Lease.

But the second witness was even goofier because I fear the man actually has greater traction among today's Right. He was a professor who is an advocate of the Austrian School of Economics. This is the talisman for libertarians and the Right. Those watching the mid-terms might have seen the Maine Tea Party urge a "return to the Austrian school in economics." Ron Paul asked whether the United States should return to the gold standard. The answer was yes,it can't hurt. But the argument of the witness was that the heyday of the United States' economic development was 1870-1920. In other words, they want to take the country back--to the 19th century.Asked whether returning to that style economics would doom the country to regular cycles of financial panics and collapse, he answered in the affirmative. He also claimed that the Great Depression was no big thing--it was only temporary. Ron Paul tried to push on the witness that the creation of FDIC and the FED only exacerbated the Depression and we would have come out of it sooner without the New Deal.

Step back for a moment--the Great Depression generated a consensus that our capitalist system needed to be regulated and its worst excesses corrected. Today, the new GOP doesn't believe this.Ron Paul's witnesses are people who would have spent the rest of their lives on the margins of our politics but now are accepted by one major party as experts. That is scary.

I've come to the conclusion that it would be best if the House were controlled today by followers of Lyndon LaRouche. Bear with me. LaRouche worshipped FDR and always argued for a national industrial policy. While he is as crazy as Paul on the Fed, he would at least propose things that could actually lead to the creation of jobs. What really is stunning is that the House GOP proposals not only do not create jobs but because certain agencies would be cut by 19% they would lead to increased unemployment across the board and a certain double dip recession. Poor Bernanke tried to explain to the Committee that the economy was recovering and much of the unemployment was cyclical but that if more jobs weren't created soon than there would be the issue of structural unemployment. I happen to think we already have the issue of structural unemployment.

You know we're facing ideological problems with Republicans when you have to defend Richard Nixon. Nixon was the one who ended the gold standard and created the EPA.

The GOP lost one member yesterday when his Craiglist entry went viral. Dating while married is not a good political move,especially when you go on line. Rivera will be next--I know I was wrong that he would be first.

The problem with the new House is what do you do when the debt ceiling has to be raised. How can you even explain this to people, who didn't even know the Patriot Act was going to be voted the other day? Or what was in it? Or what about the 13 House Republicans who refused federal health insurance and voted for the repeal of healthcare and now complain that their families may be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions? Hello? What did you think you were repealing? You won't have known because they were no hearings to inform members about what was in the bill they were repealing. They thought they were repealing socialized medicine and death panels. So how can you explain the debt ceiling to people who are so clueless?

I think Rachel Maddow is exploring the fundamental issues of the House. Others are focusing on the outrageous human cost of the cuts when the rich get their tax break and other policy matters. But the total disorder of the House business is so fundamental, it poses an existential threat to Congress as a functioning body of government.

Remember over 80 new members of the House were elected by people that could not spell basic words on their campiagn signs.

Will the House GOP pay a political price for this? I don't believe so because I don't think too many Americans remember what Congress does. Look at the polls on the last Congress, the majority of Americans didn't believe it did anything, even though historians rank it already as one of the most productive in history. I also belive that there is a large segment of the population that actually believes that healthcare reform was actually repealed. When the House reaffirms our motto as "In God We Trust", at least one-third of Americans will believe that this Congress created that slogan.

We are now in the age of magical political thinking.

Gutting the Future--The House Budget Cuts

Hal Rogers, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, unveiled today a plan to cut $32 billion from the budget, which would make it the largest cut in the federal budget in history. The budget calls for 15% spending cuts in all discretionary funding, except with slight increases in military spending. None of the entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare are touched. It is rumored that teabaggers are demanding an additional $26 billion in cuts.

Naturally almost all the targets of the heaviest cuts are President Obama's priorities. Subsidies for alternative energy sources are eliminated. Over 60 programs are completely extingished. The Americorps Volunteer Program, all family planning programs,public broadcasting,community policing programs,the weatherization of homes and office buildings,aid to education, and food and safety inspection are all curtailed. The cuts affect heating and housing subsidies to the poor, Indian health care,the Women,Infant and Children program to provide food for low-income pregnant women, mothers and roung children are all cut drastically.

Only yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden outlined a $54 billion high-speed rail program to rennovate our transportation system. All high-speed rail projects are not funded in this House budget. Also, all road construction and transportation subsidies are eliminated, once a program with enormous bipartisan support.

Aid to education, another priority of the administration, has been severely cut. Pell Grants to disadvantaged students will be cut dramatically. Aid for special education is also cut.

Not only is scientific research cut but , most importantly, health research necessary to lower health costs in the future. The EPA will have its budget cut 18% because it was to start monitoring carbon emissions this year. The war against regulatory agencies continued with slashes to food safety and inspections under the new food safety program created last year.

And the House Republicans, who have insisted from Day 1 that the health reform bill will require massive new IRS hires,(Not True) slashed the IRS budget.

From a political point of view, the aim of these cuts is meant to sabotage all the gains of the last two years on domestic legislation. FYI--President Obama's proposed cuts to military alone double the amount of funds "saved" by these cuts. However, the military actually is increased by the Republicans.

The second targets of the cuts are all the boogeymen the Right have created. For example, Americorps, first created under Bill Clinton and expanded through George W and President Obama, is Glenn Beck's infamous private army for Obama. NPR deserves to die because it fired Juan Williams. There can be no alternative transportation to automobiles and those who consumed Koch Oil. The EPA created by Richard Nixon is a believer in Global Warming and must be stopped. The slash to the IRS is really a pay back to very wealthy donors that are afraid that Obama will use the IRS for political purposes to audit their wealth. All the cuts to education are aimed at penalizing minority communities.

All the budget cuts linked to a more efficient use of energy and the development of alternative energies should be understood in the light of the Wikileaks revelation this morning that American diplomats are convinced that Saudi Arabia deliberately over-estimated their oil reserves by 40%. The consequence is that Saudi Arabia can not flood the market anymore to keep prices down. It also means that other countries will be competing more intensely for oil supplies. Only the truly stupid do not invest in the development of alternative energy sources and invest in other energy efficient modes of transportation.

From President Obama's call to become more competitive, this GOP budget is a recipe for disaster. There is nothing here for the future of the country. There is no sense of the public good and certainly no sense of the needs for the future. It is fascinating that so little money--budget-wise--can actually foreclose the nation's future.

The early newspaper accounts of this are that the Senate and the President won't let it stand and this is all to satisfy the GOP base. Rubbish. This is amateur politics that is playing with fire. The House GOP with little vindictive Ricky Cantor at the helm is trying to Mau-Mau President Obama. If this were sincere politics, you would have seen more give on the military budget since both Gates and Obama wanted it cut. Instead,you have an ideological budget drawn in to gut America's prospects for the future.

Yes, we know that the GOP only care about power and taking back the Presidency in 2012. But we have already lost a decade in our development. Simply blocking any positive steps now to score political points could lead to another lost decade in the United States. it's not like you can put everything on hold until you win in two years and then start up the engines. Life and economics don't work that way.