After failing to impress their teahadist wing with an itemized list of $23.3 billion in spending cuts, House Republican leadership is now promising to cut President Obama's FY11 budget request by $100 billion.
In another victory for tea-party rebels in Congress, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers today scrapped his original plan for spending cuts and announed that he will seek to cut $100 billion from what President Obama had requested for this year.
“My Committee has been working diligently to go line-by-line in every agency budget to find and cut unnecessary spending to reduce our deficit and help our economy thrive,” Roger said in a statement.
“After meeting with my subcommittee Chairs, we have determined that the CR can and will reach a total of $100 billion in cuts compared to the President’s request immediately - fully meeting the goal outlined in the Republican ‘Pledge to America’ in one fell swoop. Our intent is to make deep but manageable cuts in nearly every area of government, leaving no stone unturned and allowing no agency or program to be held sacred. I have instructed my committee to include these deeper cuts, and we are continuing to work to complete this critical legislation.”
Republicans had initially proposed cutting Obama's request by $58 billion, arguing that their campaign promise of a $100 billion cut should be pro-rated because by the time a budget is approved, there will only by seven months left in the fiscal year. This outraged the House's teahadist contingent who went into rebellion.
While $100 billion may sound like a lot, because it is a cut from President Obama's request, it would would represent a reduction of just $74 billion from current spending levels and would leave the deficit essentially unchanged at $1.43 trillion compared with the current projection of $1.5 trillion. It would, however, have a devastating impact on those programs that are cut and the people that depend on them. It would also threaten economic recovery, not only gutting programs that target job creation but also forcing layoffs that would further contract the economy.
Assuming House Republican leadership manages to get their teahadist-approved budget through the House, they are going to find that it's dead on arrival in the Senate and White House. And unless they can figure out a way to get teahadists to agree to a budget that can pass the Senate and get President Obama's signature, Republicans are going to need to either fund the government with another continuing resolution or they are going to trigger a shutdown.
So in bowing to teahadist pressure Republicans are only granting themselves a momentary respite from the political firestorm. They may be quelling the rebellion from the right, but they are dramatically increasing the likelihood of a government shutdown. If they can't stand the heat from angry teahadists, just wait until they start getting blowback from senior citizens whose Social Security checks won't get printed or from doctors and nurses whose fees won't receive Medicare reimbursement.