Will the GOP's Budget Cuts Gut the Middle Class?

[NNN0LHI]

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/01/republican-budget-cut-middle-class

By Andy Kroll

| Mon Jan. 17, 2011 3:00 AM PST.

It’s the biggest task facing the new House Republican majority now settling into life in Washington: Making good on its promise to slash the federal budget and shrink the size of government. Top Republicans like House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of California have pledged to slim government down to 2008 budget levels, a strategy that's been called "back-to-Bush." In early January, Boehner told reporters, "On September 24, we made clear in the that we want to go back to 2008 spending levels...There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it."

Problem is, no one knows where exactly House Republicans plan to apply the scalpel. It's not clear they themselves know where they’ll cut. The "Pledge to America" only calls for reductions to non-security discretionary programs; that means agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Homeland Security, and Defense Department would be exempt. The GOP's plan would cut non-security discretionary funding—the roughly one-third of government spending controlled by Congress, which excludes programs like Social Security and Medicare—by nearly 22 percent, shaving $105 billion off of President Obama’s $483 billion 2011 budget proposal.

Now, that doesn’t mean Republicans will slash one-fifth of all the budgets for non-security programs. They could gut some programs entirely, and leave others completely untouched to achieve the kind of savings they want. But they've provided no hints of what might be trimmed—or gutted.

But if you apply the GOP’s proposed cuts across the board—21.7 percent for all non-security programs—you get a glimpse of what's on the table and what could face the axe under Speaker Boehner. In fact, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has done just that. What it found was grim, with middle class Americans set to lose the most.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. they will gut blue states and serve pork to red states

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. They wouldn't do it if it didn't.

An idea just came to me now, with mention that security programs will not be cut - that perhaps the Republican top-tier assholes are looking to eliminate the middle class and create a new security class: a perpetually just-underemployed class of people who will provide security at the all new prisons (war on drugs, war on crime), provide security at the airports and other places (war on terror), a larger military, more police, more FBI and CIA (to surveil the american public)...

all, of course, in the name of securing the assets and capital of the rich Republicans protecting Mur'ka.

[DCKit]

3. They could remove the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan from the budget.

That is, after all, how BushCo* did it.

[dkf]

4. These are also the programs that may be squeezed out as the obligations of social security

Medicare and the interest on the national debt expand. Would these drastic cuts get us to a balanced budget or does it take even more than that.

[aquart]

5. It was the smug middle class that propelled them to power.

I feel they will have regrets.

[TygrBright]

6. This is a rhetorical question, right? n/t