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The new class of House Republicans came to Washington to make cuts, and that is exactly what they have begun doing. They have quite proudly managed to put together a continuing resolution that will cut $61 billion from existing programs. No doubt these Republicans will be held up as “serious people” who are willing to make the “tough choices,” like cutting job training programs, AmeriCorps, nutritional assistance to the poor, home heating assistance, and, of course, defunding Big Bird.
To put all this in context, the $61 billion saved by severely cutting many domestic programs will end up being enough to pay for just barely more than four months of the almost decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the direct cost of the wars this year is roughly $468 million a day. Add in things like increased long-term health care costs for injured veterans, and the number of months of war these cuts will actually pay for is probably significantly less.
The anti-war members of Congress who want to quickly end the conflicts are basically advocating for a roughly $170 billion cut from our discretionary spending that would result in no reductions to any domestic program. That is an amount three times larger than all the cuts combined in this CR from House Republicans.
It would be nice if the title of “deficit hawk” was assigned to politicians based on how the totality of their positions would actually effect the budget, instead of merely their willingness inflict pain on regular people.
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War is just so much more important than the people (US citizens or those of Irak or Afghanistan or anywhere else US adventurism is being played out) doncha know? /s
Wall street and MIC corporations are now sacred cows. Guantanamo, Bagram and other torture centers, propped up dictators, killing bombing is the Amrican way. Who is the Pig in charge?
Thanks for the update. I feel like Alice through the looking-glass, witnessing far too many citizens who are very satisfied to watch their fellow US citizens suffer via draconian govt spending cuts, whilst paying for unending wars for no reason that result in death, maiming and wanton destruction. And then, of course, don’t want to pay for the Vets who come home and need help.
Deficit Hawk sounds much more macho than the more accurate Chicken Hawk.
Deficit Hawks and Chicken Hawks must make the tough decisions to inflict pain and suffering on the masses while they lavish tha MIC with the booty of the masses.
Loving all creatures does not include condoning non compassionate actions. They create bad karma for us all. The richest taxes need reinstating and the loopholes and tax dodges need collecting. Moving operations to cheap labor markets should raise taxes. They are supposed to represent the people not the corporation who should pay for every penny of the war. Boycott.
And House Dems will go along with it and
BushObama will sign it.not in my name
Remember former George Herbert Walker Bush Administration old school investment banker Catherine Austin Fitts? At some point Fitts saw through the whole thing and dared to blow the whistle. She survived to tell her story and is the person upon which the protagonist in the film Enemy of the State is based.
She recently chatted with Max Keiser and did a beautiful very understandable system diagram of the world financial model the kleptocrats are running. She sums up very incisively what and who holds it in place in “On the Edge with Max Keiser-Revolutions and Economy-02-11-2011-(Part3)” beginning at time point 2:12. The short answer is force (e.g. all those wars domestic and foreign). The whole thing is a must-see (starts here) and you have to see it all to understand how she chooses to frame her discussion and how it actually matches up with Keiser’s in-your-face framing for non-investment bankers.
P.S. After Palast’s recent interview with Keiser, Palast has lost credibility in my eyes. Maybe he got scared in his last incarceration incident unless he’s been compromised all along.
Smells like the end of the empire. No sense of collective sacrifice or purpose. No sense of collective responsibility or community. And all this forced within the dominant, violently destructive, fundamentalist ideology of Neoconservativism. When an empire has lost its sense of purpose and community, stopped making things and switched to a financed-based economy, and then proceeds to piss away money it doesn’t have on war, it’s the end of the line. Thank god.
“Military strength alone will not avail if we do not use it actively to maintain a world order which both supports and rests upon American hegemony.” –Robert Kagan
“Military conquest has often proved to be an effective means of implanting democracy.” –Joshua Muravchik
Well all that crusading ain’t free. And these fear-addled control addicts imagine themselves the good guys.
Uh, can we get some NAMES of this mythical group?
I don’t recall such a creature . . . .
It sure ain’t the 60′s…
Jeesh, it’s not just a war in Afghanistan, it’s an expanded engagement in an energy-rich area of commercial importance.
US Assistant Secretary of State Blake spelled out the Central and South Asia strategy in a speech on 19 Jan 2011:
Of course the US tilt toward India has exacerbated the anti-Americanism of the Pakistan people, as well as the Pakistan army and its support of the GI-killing Taliban because of fears of Indian encirclement, but hey, that’s life. Think of the money that can be made in Central Asia. Expanded engagement, that’s the ticket.
Smile when you say GOProud, fellah!
Ha! Indeed. The only one I know of is Barbara Lee. The rest of them, as Kathy Griffin might say, can suck it.
No shit. Say, whatever happened to those Dems that were re-elected last fall? Did Pelosi retire? Don’t hear squat from her anymore.
The contrast on priorities was laid out last night by Rush Holt of New Jersey.