Warning! Politics ahead! I try to avoid it at all costs, but some Fridays, I just can’t take it. Senstive eyes need not continue reading, although graduate students with loans might be tempted to take a look, irrespective of their taste or distaste for politics.
Via Gordon Watts. Want to see one reason why I’m not a Republican? Check out Operation Offset a document put together by a gaggle of Republicans which attempts to pay for hurricane relief. Here is a sampling of their proposed cuts
Increase Allowable Co-payments for Medicaid
Increase Medicare Part B Premium from 25% to 30%
Reduce Medicaid Administrative Spending (i.e. pass the cost on the states.)
Eliminate Subsidized Loans to Graduate Students. This one I’ve got to quote in full: “The federal government has extensive loan options for financing education. Students have likely had government help paying for college, if there was financial need. Graduate students make an informed decision to invest in their own futures and should bare the costs of schooling, especially since private interest rates are currently low. This reform would allow federal higher education funding to be focused on college students while still allowing graduate students to benefit from unsubsidized federal loans. Savings: $8.6 billion over ten years ($4.2 billion over five years)”
Level Funding for Global AIDS Initiative
Level Funding for African Development Foundation
Level Funding for the Peace Corps
Eliminate the National Science Foundation Math and Science Program. This clearly doesn’t mean what it says: “The NSF promotes math and science education by improving teacher training and developing instructional material. However, the program is now duplicative of programs at the Department of Education, including the Math and Science Partnership authorized by No Child Left Behind. Savings: $2 billion over ten years ($973 million over five years)”
Reduce Funding for Department of Education Administration
Cancel NASA’s New Moon/Mars Initiative
Eliminate the Next Generation of High-Speed Rail
Reduce Funding for the Cooperative State Research and Education
Reduce Funding for the Centers for Disease Control
Reduce Funding for the Agriculture Research Service
Eliminate the Advanced Technology Program
Eliminate State and Community Grants for Energy Conservation
Eliminate Federal Grants for Wastewater Infrastructure
Eliminate the Energy Star Program
Reduce Fish and Wildlife Construction
Eliminate the Applied Research for Renewable Energy Sources Program
Eliminate the Clean Coal Technology Program
Eliminate Teen Funding Portion of Title X Family Planning (this one’s about contraceptives, people, in case you were wondering)
Eliminate funding for the National and Community Service Act
Raise the Threshold for Davis-Bacon Coverage (aka screw the really really poor.)
Eliminate Federal Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Eliminate Funding for the National Endowment for the Arts
Eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities
Reduced Funds for Bureau of Indian Affairs School Construction
Reduced Funding for Waste Disposal Grants
and my favorite, certainly one of the major issues of the day:
Eliminate Funding for Penile Implants Under Medicare
If you want your head to spin, go and read the full document here. Reading this will make you think that we don’t need a government, because, surely, through the charity and good will they are so well known for, private industry will fill in where all these cuts are made! All hail our corporate masters and their great kindness that have driven corporate profits to all time highs while real income has declined and poverty has increased!
The thing about “Operation Offset” is that if the Republicans really went through with it, it would be a circular firing squad. The Republicans know this, so in the end most of it will go nowhere.
For example more than half of the savings in “Operation Offset” come from undoing two recent pieces of Republican handiwork: The Medicare drug bill, and the patronage (which they call “pork”) in the Highway bill. They have no intention of going back on either one.
On the other hand, some of the their targets really are pointless and don’t even have to be replaced by any corporate alternative. Certainly the “Moon/Mars Initiative” fits that description. Why does Bush want us to return to the moon? “Spacecraft assembled and provisioned on the moon could escape its far lower gravity using far less energy, and thus, far less cost.” Yeah, right.
Meanwhile, the NSF does have a large math and science education budget and it does seem redundant with the Department of Education. I have heard that the NSF math education budget is larger than the NSF math research budget, never mind what the Department of Education spends.
But then, even if some of these token cuts are actually good ideas, they are still ammo for a circular firing squad, politically speaking. So they are also unlikely to happen. Mostly likely, in the end, we will just have a bigger budget deficit.
Nice work, actually looking at that document. Now stop thinking about the outside world and get back to work!
I agree with Kuperberg: This, like most legislation proposed, is merely “ideological”; it is not expected to pass, and if it does pass, it is not expected to have any force. I think there may once have been a time at which the government thought of itself as doing something for the people, but my historian friends don’t really back me up on this.
I agree that it is merely “ideological,” but this doesn’t make me feel any better. Like staring into a dark soul I feel I have little connection with. It also reavels to me a level of, ok this isn’t nice but I’ll say it anyway: stupidity. Justifying an elimination of graduate student loans over ten years because “interest rates are currently low?” The document is full of such simply minded falacies. I’m not sure which is scarier, the soul I see in the cuts, or the mind justifying them.
But Hogg is right: Back to the lovely land of quantum monte carlo simulations! Ahhh…that’s better.
Dave, I understand you are just venting, but I have to ask what you mean by the “dark soul†allusions. Do you believe the authors of this plan were motivated by malevolence? Selfishness?
Yep, just venting.
I don’t know if I can choose single words to describe why this irks me.
For example, why are absolutely none of the cuts coming from the department of defense, which makes up half of discretionary spending in the budget? Sure, Bill, both you and I depend on the largeness of said department, but at a time when the United States is threatened by no single nation, why should this portion of the budget be totally spared?
Why also are there no tax increases? Why not repel many of the taxes of the past few years? As far as I can tell, the major stimulating effect of these cuts had nothing to do with helping out the bottom 25% of our country? I can make arguments just as good as anyone about stimulating the economy by appropriate tax cuts, but the cuts of the previous years have done little of the sort: instead setting of a gluttony in corporate profits while we have only seen an increase in the percentage of poor and a decline in their real income. Corporate profits are at all time highs. Why aren’t they being asked to foot the bill?
Why attack Davis-Bacon? Any arguments that this will do much more than hack away at the poorest people, don’t hold much weight (stimulus? If the cost of stimulating the economy is to send another 2% below poverty, it’s not worth it.) Similarly many of the cuts will mostly effect those who are at the bottom of the barrel. Now I’m no fan of welfare, on the other hand, we live in a country where more than 13% of people live below the poverty line. I just can’t relate. (see also “reduce Bureau of Indian Affairs School Construction” and “reduce Funding for Waste Disposal Grants”
There are also across the board cuts aimed at getting rid of enviromental regulations. Again, while I believe reform of this legistlation is needed, these cuts aren’t designed to do that. They are designed to eliminate the regulations all together. I just can’t relate.
On the other hand, there are a few in the list which I’ve included which I don’t have much problem with. I think the NASA moon mission is highly debatable.