This place, it seems, has been consumed as of late about the internal debates of the Democratic party. We seem to be more interested in criticizing members of this faction or that faction because they failed to vote the right way on some issue that will pass anyway.
Yet there has been almost no discussion about the vote last night on the GOP budget, which passed by a mere three votes -- with seven Democrats deciding to leave early for the weekend. If you are looking for a reason to be outraged, I think this one is a bit more deserving.
Here's what the GOP Budget, which EVERY Democrat voted against,
does
-- uses every dollar of the Social Security trust fund surplus,
-- the deficit bigger,
-- makes room for expensive new tax cuts likely to be targeted largely to the most fortunate Americans,
-- Cuts Medicaid By $10 Billion, and By Possibly Up To $14.7 Billion,
-- Cuts Pensions and Student Loan Programs,
-- Cuts conservation programs and food stamps,
--- Funds Veterans' Health Care $13.5 billion below the level CBO estimates is needed to keep pace with inflation,
-- Cuts 2006 appropriations for education, training, and social services by $1.5 billion,
-- Cuts environmental protection funding by $25.6 billion below the amount needed to maintain purchasing power,
-- Cuts Public Health programs by $22.4 billion below the amount needed to maintain purchasing power over the next five years,
-- and includes tax cuts, that overwhelingly favor the rich, of $106 billion over the next five years.
The fact is, every single Democrat in the House voted against this atrocious budget, and so did 15 Republicans. Like I said, seven Democrats didn't make it for the vote. Had they been there, we would have won.
This place is, in this long time dkos contributor's opinion, getting way too obsessed with which faction of our own party we should try to kick out, and is completely losing sight of the real impacts of the politics we purport to care about. A lot of Americans are going to be hurt by this budget... and it didn't have to happen. All we needed were a few more Democrats to show up and vote, but the only outrage I see here towards Democrats are the F-'em crowd.
If you want Democrats to be pissed at, start with these seven. They actually impacted people's lives last night. Where's the outrage?