Eugene Robinson: How Government Money Should Be Spent

[babylonsister]

How Government Money Should Be Spent
By Eugene Robinson


WASHINGTON -- Despite what you might have heard, the coming battle on Capitol Hill is not really about "government spending" in the abstract. It's about two radically different visions of how money should be spent.

Republicans who feign attacks of the vapors and fainting spells over the big, scary deficit would be more convincing if they didn't begin with the insane premise that defense spending should be sacrosanct. The House leadership in the last few days has begun to signal retreat from this indefensible position, but it's unclear how much of the hyper-conservative GOP majority will follow.

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The conservatives want to end funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Legal Services Corporation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Energy Star program, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ... you get the picture. Put together, these expenditures would not begin to pay for, say, the $13 billion Marine Corps landing craft that Gates plans to kill because we are no longer fighting World War II.

You'd think that Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, would have applauded Gates' frugality. Instead, he described himself as "not happy" and vowed he will "not stand idly by and watch the White House gut defense when Americans are deployed in harm's way."

In other words, it's perfectly fine to waste money on defense. What's not acceptable to GOP conservatives, apparently, is spending on agencies or programs that they oppose philosophically. Don't believe in climate change, despite wide scientific consensus that it's real? Just cut off funding for the U.N. panel that disagrees with your view.

It seems to have dawned on Cantor that this position is fundamentally untenable and politically unwise. He has his work cut out for him if much of the GOP caucus sees the budget as an expression not of policy but of vengeance and spite.

[Democrats_win]

1. M$M doesn't report that these programs cost relatively nothing.

They just report that such-and-such representative wants to cut Public Broadcasting or UN funding. These cuts are insignificant but a lot of people will be affected. Meanwhile corporate welfare lives on.