The cruelty IS the point- The politics of the Freedumb Caucus
When bailing out corporations isn't a problem, but helping low-income Americans is, you're the worst sort of (barely) human being
The level of reductions in the existing House resolution set us back significantly on issues that government should be funding for the benefit of this country.
G. William Hoagland, senior vice president of the Bipartisan Policy Center
What the aforementioned Mr. Hoagland is trying to tell us, in the highly coded diplomatic language of official Washington, is that Far-Right Republicans are (again) trying to screw the poor. No surprise there. It’s not unusual for Republicans to attempt to balance budgets on the backs of low-income Americans, but this effort is particularly cynical.
As I write this, I’m sitting in the American Airlines lounge at DFW Airport outside Dallas f*****g, Texas (yes, I’m behind enemy lines…we’re headed to Toronto to meet some friends). I’m surrounded by laptop-wielding, cell-phone-addicted business types who’ll never have to wrestle with this question. Nonetheless, watching one of our two major political parties attempting to screw the poor chaps my hide.
We should be better than this. That we’re not is a sad commentary on our relationship with our fellow Americans.
Most of us on the Left believe that one of the primary roles of our government should be to offer a hand up to those in need. Republicans, historically, have seen their role and responsibility as punishing the poor and downtrodden for their lot in life. That may seem monstrous (it is), but Republicans are heading down the same path that once gave us “solutions” like debtor’s prisons.
Cutting housing subsidies for the poor by 33 percent as soaring rents drive a national affordability crisis. Forcing more than 1 million women and children onto the waitlist of a nutritional assistance program for poor mothers with young children. Reducing federal spending on home heating assistance for low-income families by more than 70 percent with energy prices high heading into the winter months.
With days left before the government shuts down, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has embraced steep reductions to the U.S. safety net in an attempt to appease far-right Republican demands for lower spending. If McCarthy can win over conservatives and pass legislation funding the government, Republicans hope to have greater leverage in negotiations with the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House.
But far-right votes have remained elusive, leading McCarthy to propose ever larger and still evolving spending cuts.
As Speaker McCarthy becomes increasingly desperate to find a solution (and keep his job), it’s becoming apparent that the shortest distance between two points involves screwing the poor.
And the Speaker seems to have no problem sacrificing the social safety net in the name of expediency. After all, those who benefit from that sort of government largesse tend not to vote Republican, anyway, so no significant loss, right?
Same as it ever was.
The biggest problem is that the discussion, at least for the hard-Right Freedumb Caucus members, has nothing to do with compassion. It’s all about dollars; Republicans like Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ) don’t believe that the government has ANY obligation to assist those down on their luck.
Compassion? That’s for losers and Liberals.
Corporations who might be experiencing hard times, though…well, that’s a much different story. The Freedumb Caucus appears to have little problem helping out Big Business by throwing billions at them. Still, they balk at providing hundreds or thousands of dollars to assist needy individuals.
No, that’s…SOCIALISM!!! And no patriotic, God-fearing Republican wants to be known for enabling lazy, shiftless poor people.
McCarthy, for his part, has emphasized that he is focused on approving government funding legislation with the narrow Republican majority, rather than trying to craft a bipartisan compromise that draws Democratic support. Hard-right lawmakers have warned that if McCarthy relies on Democratic votes to pass any fiscal bill, they would move swiftly to force him from the speakership.
“I believe we have a majority here, and we can work together to solve this,” McCarthy told reporters. “This is the same place you were all asking me during the debt ceiling. So you know what, it might take us a little longer. But this is important. We want to make sure that we can end the wasteful spending that the Democrats have put forth.”
The social safety net items in the federal budget are known as “entitlements,” which is a terrible misnomer. Republicans have seized on that label for years as something evil and socialistic, something that could only serve to breed laziness and dependence on government.
The reality is that nothing could be further from the truth. Few Americans WANT to spend their lives on government assistance, but some may sometimes need help. Whether unemployment insurance, welfare, WIC, or other government programs, they’re intended to meet a need or bridge a gap.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to be born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and I believe there’s a social contract that calls on all of us to do what we can to help those in need of a hand up. That’s one of the most important roles of our government. It’s not SOCIALISM!!!!…it’s compassion. It’s caring for those whose circumstances are such that, to rise above, they need a helping hand.
The plan from Republican appropriators called for a roughly 80 percent cut to funding for public schools that serve high concentrations of students in poverty, according to the Center for American Progress. It would have also cut by at least half a fruit and vegetable benefit for poor pregnant mothers, which serves roughly 5 million people. It would have slashed the budget for the office responsible for administering Social Security benefits to tens of millions of Americans, while also advancing multibillion cuts to the National Institutes of Health, Head Start and preschool grants.
“It is bad news for kids and lower-income households, undoubtedly,” said Michelle Dallafior, senior vice president of budget and tax for the advocacy group First Focus on Children, of the cuts. The maximum amounts of Pell Grants for low-income students would be frozen, the National Labor Relations Board would see its budget cut by a third, and affordable housing grants would be cut by about two-thirds, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
But, as one might imagine, with Republicans so thoroughly devoid of compassion for anyone or anything without an “Inc.” behind their names, not even these cuts were enough to win their approval.
And yet a small handful of far-right conservatives, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), has also rejected these cuts as insufficient. Many of the demands from the House Freedom Caucus and other hard-right lawmakers stem from promises McCarthy while running for speaker in January, when House Republicans failed multiple times to select a leader….
Six Republican members from two different factions, three from the pragmatic Main Street Caucus and three from the hard-right Freedom Caucus, met for several days before announcing a deal on a stopgap measure last week. That would have funded the government for 30 days, cutting every department except the military and veterans programs by 8 percent. It included most of a Republican-approved border security bill.
The White House said that plan would mean 300,000 households, including 20,000 veterans, would lose housing support, 6.6 million students would see their Pell Grants cut, 60,000 seniors would lose help from services like Meals on Wheels and 2.1 million women would be waitlisted due to the cuts to the program for poor women who are pregnant or mothers. And yet again even these cuts, despite being blessed by several Freedom Caucus leaders, were also rejected by the smaller faction of hard-right House conservatives, who panned the measure and argued it still spent too much money.
Of course, there’s never a moment’s discussion of cutting anything in our bloated military budget, which rolls an average of more than $2 BILLION per day through the front door of the Pentagon. If Republicans were serious about cutting spending, why not look at the most wasteful and inefficient part of the federal budget? Why are they focused on the pennies of the social safety net when there are actual DOLLARS of waste to be found in the Pentagon’s budgets?
As if we don’t already know the answer to that one, right? The military-industrial complex and its army of lobbyists are very good at what they do. Low-income Americans have precisely ZERO lobbyists on their payroll.
And it shows.
The impasse has forced McCarthy into a legislative bind with only days to spare before a shutdown that many Republicans believe will bring a political backlash to their party. House Republican officials have discussed another $60 billion in spending cuts, but it is unclear if such a measure would prove sufficient to appease the remaining conservative holdouts.
“Speaker McCarthy is proposing increasingly deep cuts to some parts of the social safety net and many other critical government functions in an attempt to appease extreme members of his caucus,” [Bobby] Kogan [senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress] said. “This would increase suffering among some of the most vulnerable Americans.”
Increasing “suffering among some of the most vulnerable Americans?” That’s the point for Republicans, particularly those in the Freedumb Caucus, don’tchathink?
Yes, it most certainly is. And Speaker McCarthy’s dilemma is the perfect opportunity for the Freedumb Caucus to turn the screws on low-income Americans as much as possible.
They must be loving their work.
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