You've gotta be
kidding me.
House Republican leaders have moved from balking at big cuts in Medicaid and other programs to embracing them, driven by pent-up anger from fiscal conservatives concerned about runaway spending and the leadership's own weakening hold on power.
Beginning this week, the House GOP lawmakers will take steps to cut as much as $50 billion from the fiscal 2006 budget for health care for the poor, food stamps and farm supports, as well as considering across-the-board cuts in other programs.
When talk began of a War on Poverty following the great Katrina awakening when it was all the sudden discovered that not everyone had a second home to escape to, I didn't realize they meant a literal war on the poor. Now, I'm just as much for fiscal responsibility as the next guy, but I suppose that I just don't think the bottom is where the true government excrement is.
Here is a list of things NOT included on the chopping block to increase fiscal responsibility:
- the estate tax
- Bush's tax cuts
- The infamous bridges to nowhere in Alaska
- The Missile Defense System that doesn't work
- No-Bid Contracting (Halliburton et. al)
For a second there, in September, conservatives were worried that there precious hatchett job on the Great Society and the New Deal wouldn't go through as planned after Katrina exposed just how many people were in dire straits and did not benefit from tax cuts on estates and capital gains.
But then Tom DeLay got indicted, and their moment was there to press a new focus on Republicans. Not on blatent corruption and pork spending, but on cutting some of the most beneficial and popular government programs we have to make room for all of said pork.
I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or salivate that I now have my talking points for 2006.
Sometimes, they just make it too easy for me to dislike them.