"Starve the Beast" is really the Republican practice of "Cut and Run"

[BurtWorm]

Says my friend Jared Bernstein, author of All Together Now, in a post on TomPaine.com:

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/07/20/the_real_cutandrunners.php

...

Start with the fiscal mess. With their relentless tax cutting, the Bush administration and the Congress have cut revenue collections to historically low levels. Recent reports of a revenue boom are overstated, as revenue growth remains well below its historical average. That’s why we’re looking at a budget deficit of around $300 billion this year.

Moreover, the current deficits are child’s play compared to what’s coming, when future entitlement obligations ensure that tax increases or program cuts will be forthcoming. So part two of this strategy is to make sure tax increases are off the table so we’ll be forced to cut programs like Medicare and Social Security.

They call it “starving the beast” but it’s really their own version of “cut and run.” Slash the budget, keep spending freely while you’re in charge, then run from the inevitable mess that’s coming.

Next, take the agencies. President Clinton took FEMA’s role seriously and the agency actually operated effectively during disasters in the 1990s, such as the Northridge earthquake. When George W. Bush was elected, he gave the job of heading FEMA to his campaign manager, Joe Allbaugh (Brownie came later), who criticized his new charge as “an oversized entitlement program.” Budget and staff cuts followed and the rest is history in the making, as FEMA’s response to Katrina has evolved from lethal to wasteful.

Then there's the Department of Health and Human Services which first crafted an unworkable prescription drug policy —you’re covered up to a point, but once you spend too much, you lose coverage, only to gain it back later—and then bungled its implementation to the point where half the states invoked emergency powers or executive orders to free up the money needed to repair the damage. Meanwhile the Labor Department has gutted ergonomic, mine safety, and training programs, while agreeing to give Wal-Mart advance notice before investigating employee complaints . Our Department of Housing and Urban Development was another major player in the Katrina debacle and the IRS is cutting back on corporate oversight to spend more time auditing the working poor.

...

[elehhhhna]

1. They are not starving the beast. They are bleeding the beast.

Big difference. Not picking on you but I wish we'd call it what it is.

[BurtWorm]

2. True. But "starve the beast" is their misnomer for what they're doing.

Which is actually running and leaving the mess for others to clean up.