Government spending went up under President Obama because it was supposedto go up. The dramatic increases in food stamps, TANF, and unemploymentinsurance was supposed to increase because of the social safety nets thatwere put in place to protect average Americans in the event of economicdownturns.
And because of the last catastrophic recession, the worst economic downturnsince the Great Depression, Obama (and Congress) had no choice but to increasegovernment spending to help millions of Americans who lost their jobs and theirhomes (yes, even Republican voters benefited from these same programs).
But let's not forget how the recession started: Under George W. Bush we hadmore deregulation, theout-sourcing of 52,000 factories (which MittRomney helped along), two unpaid wars, tax breaks for the rich (for whichpeople like MittRomney benefited the most), and trillions more in spending for many other porkbarrel projects (e.g. "The Road to Nowhere" for Sarah Palin). Therecession was years in the making, so how can any sane person believe thatone man with only 4 years in office, and with 2 years of Republicanobstructionism, be expected to turn the economy around on a dime?
During good economic times, we were supposed to build up our reserves (likewe did under Bill Clinton), but instead, the Republicans went on a spendingspree. It was part of the GOP plan to increase debt, which I'll get to later.Now the GOP is complaining about "kicking the can down the road" whenit comes to our government debt. And to fix it, the GOP wants the very ones whowere the most hurt by the recession to suffer more.
Simply put, the GOP's plan for reducing the deficit is to cut food stamps andMedicaid (and other social programs) for the poor, cut Medicare and Social Securityfor the elderly and disabled, while at the same time cutting taxes for the rich,subsidizing profitable corporations like big oil, and subsidizingthe rich and famous -- including Tea Party politicians such as MichelleBachmann.
The Tea Party darling and Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann and herhusband's "mental health" clinic (Bachmann & Associates) received nearly$30,000 from the government. They also received another $260,000 in federal farmsubsidies. And on average, they also received $600 a month from thegovernment for each of their 23 adopted children --- to feed them. But she andeveryone else in the Tea Party and the GOP wants to cut food stamps for theunemployed and poor to balance thebudget.
As an aside: In 2008, Michele Bachmann and her husband Marcus moved from their 3,056 square-foot Stillwater Minnesota home where they had lived for 16 years and moved into anew 5,300 square-foot home (built in 2007). The new house, also inStillwater (West Lakeland Township, Minnesota) is located overlooking the 18th hole on the StoneRidge GolfCourse where couplesmemberships are $4,150 annually. Theirnew home ( 4 bed/4 bath) was priced at $1.75 million when it first appeared in the 2007 Parade of Homes and featured as a “dream home". Later it was assessed at$1.27 million in 2008, but the Bachmanns nabbed it for a cool $760,000. Michele Bachmann also owns a share of a 950-acre farm in the town of Montana in Wisconsin. Her share is worth $500,000 to $1 million. She never need food stamps. (Her house and farm are pictured at the bottom of this post.)
You may remember when Tea Party radical MikePence, the Republican U.S. Representative for Indiana's 6th Congressional, said ofthe U.S. government: "Shut it down!"
He wasn't being overly dramatic or exaggerating...he was dead serious, as are most of the TeaParty members in the House. It's all part of a real plan the GOP had hatched decades ago.
The U.S. debt is real, but the "crisis" is fake. As James Kwak, an associateprofessor at University of Connecticut School of Law and co-author White HouseBurning writes, even though it's "a real problem that needs to be addressed; we need to address it in the waythat's best for the American people as a whole; that means preserving the social insurance programs that almost everyone dependson."
Yet the Republicans, the Tea Party, John Boehner and Mitt Romney are trying to turn the national debt back into a major political issue again. Andyou can expect the Republicans to bang on this drum from now until November.
"Starve the Beast" is a conscious strategy by conservatives to force cuts in federal spending by deliberately bankrupting the country.As conceived by the right-wing intellectual Irving Kristol in 1980, the plan called for Republicans to create a "fiscal problem" (or "debtcrisis") by slashing taxes -- and then foist the pain of re-imposing fiscal discipline (austerity) onto future Democratic administrations(e.g. Obama) who, in Kristol's words, would be forced to "tidy up afterward."
Starving the beast is the fiscal-political strategy of American conservatives to cut taxes in order to deprive the government of revenuein a deliberate effort to create a fiscal budget "crisis" that is intended to force the federal government to reduce spending (rather thanrestore tax levels). The short and medium term effect of the strategy has increased United States public debt rather than reducedspending.
We saw this vividly played out last year when the Tea Party Republicans almost shut down the government, which resulted inhaving the United States' credit rating reduced.
Just recently Democrats controlling the Senate rejected for the second year in a row Wednesday a budget plan passed by HouseRepublicans. The 58-41 vote against the GOP budget came after a daylong debate in which Democrats blasted Republicans forrefusing to consider tax increases as part of a solution to trillion-dollar deficits.
The Republicans in turn attacked Democrats for not offering a budget at all. Republicans launched the debate, which was aimed lessat successfully passing a bill than highlighting the failure of Senate Democrats to deal with a budget deficit expected to top $1 trillionfor the fourth consecutive year.
The Senate was to vote on five separate budget plans, including one based on President Barack Obama's February budget and offeredby Republicans to embarrass Democrats and the White House. It failed on a 99-0 vote. Three GOP senators elected in 2010 withTea Party support also offered plans in a competition to see whose budget could cut government the most.
Now the Leader of the House John Boehner is threatening to shut down the governmentagain.
Each GOP plan would sharply cut domestic programs such as food stamps and unemployment benefits, and also calls for a dramatictransformation of Medicare that would turn it into a voucher-like program. Democrats called for a "balanced" solution blending taxincreases on wealthier people with less severe spending cuts.
"We will not allow the debt and deficit to be reduced on the backs of the middle class and most vulnerable Americans without callingon the wealthiest to contribute," says Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) "That is not fair, it's not what the American people want, andit's simply not going to happen."
Many Republicans have already publicly come out and said they refused to compromise.
The GOP will do anything to have their own way and to get Obama out of the White House, evenif it means shutting down the government, and to hell with America's seniorcitizens, the unemployed, the disabled, and the poor -- even if it means anotherdownturn for America's credit rating.
The GOP wants to convince voters that the U.S. is spending too much borrowed money, but the GOP wasn't so concerned aboutdebt when George W. Bush was the president; and the GOP isn't concerned enough to raise taxes on billionaires. Instead, the GOP'splan to fix this "sudden and immediate crisis" is to cut food stamps for unemployed Americans-- and then give more tax breaks to all the billionaires who laid them off. To literally "starve the beast".
While although I realize that half the members of Congress are millionaires,but still, if the GOP wants to force a government shut down (and is so adamantabout cutting off funds to the most needy in our country), I would suggest thatwe first start with government handouts congressionalpaychecks.
See my other related post "Paul Ryan and the GOP has Waged Class War with Food Stamps"
(Below) One Beast the Government Didn't Starve - In addition to allher other government handouts, Michele Bachmann also gets an annual salary of$174,000 a year from the beasts.
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