NYT: It’s Not Really About Spending

[FourScore]

Editorial
It’s Not Really About Spending
Published: April 7, 2011

If the federal government shuts down at midnight on Friday — which seems likely unless negotiations take a sudden turn toward rationality — it will not be because of disagreements over spending. It will be because Republicans are refusing to budge on these ideological demands:

• No federal financing for Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions. Instead, state administration of federal family planning funds, which means that Republican governors and legislatures will not spend them.

• No local financing for abortion services in the District of Columbia.

• No foreign aid to countries that might use the money for abortion or family planning. And no aid to the United Nations Population Fund, which supports family-planning services.

• No regulation of greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency.

• No funds for health care reform or the new consumer protection bureau established in the wake of the financial collapse.

Abortion. Environmental protection. Health care. Nothing to do with jobs or the economy; instead, all the hoary greatest hits of the Republican Party, only this time it has the power to wreak national havoc: furloughing 800,000 federal workers, suspending paychecks for soldiers and punishing millions of Americans who will have to wait for tax refunds, Social Security applications, small-business loans, and even most city services in Washington. The damage to a brittle economy will be substantial...

SNIP

...A measure to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions came up for a Senate vote on Wednesday and failed. If Republicans want to have yet another legislative debate about abortion and family planning, let them try to pass a separate bill containing their restrictions. But that bill would fail, too, and they know it, so they have chosen extortion.

The lack of seriousness in the House is reflected in the taunting bill it passed on Thursday to keep the government open for another week at an absurdly high cost of $12 billion in cuts and the ban on District of Columbia abortion financing. The Senate and the White House said it was a nonstarter. Many of the same House members who earlier had said they would refuse to approve another short-term spending bill voted for this one, clearly hoping they could use its inevitable failure in the Senate to blame the Democrats for the shutdown. What could be more cynical?...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/opinion/08fri1.html?_r=1&src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB

[woodsprite]

1. These facts have to be shouted loud and clear.

I've heard even state employees here in DE blame the Dems for not working with the Repubs on this. We have to make them own this.

[emulatorloo]

2. Rec and thanks for posting this n/t

[FiveGoodMen]

3. Better than I would have expected from the NYT

"Democrats in the White House and the Senate say they will not give in to this policy extortion, and we hope they do not weaken. These issues have no place in a stopgap spending bill a few minutes from midnight."

(emphasis mine)