FY 2012: Expect more of the same
Columns, Opinion, Sub Feature Monday, April 11th, 2011
ILLUSTRATION BY BRENDAN HEALY
Tweet that inspired this week’s column: foxnewspolitics After Historic Deal, Battles Loom Over Debt Ceiling, 2012 Budget http://fxn.ws/hAqKrP
Friday night, in the eleventh hour, Democrats and Republicans informally agreed on a 2011 budget that includes 38.5 billion of spending cuts and averts government shutdown through Friday, April 15. Final agreement on FY 2011 budget is expected by mid-week.
Congratulations, Congress. If by some miracle you do finalize and pass the 2011 budget, Americans can look forward to another year of the incessant, indecisive partisan bickering of their representatives in Washington as you debate the details of the 2012 budget.
The proof is in the pudding. Undoubtedly, this last round of indecision can be blamed on the Republicans. The GOP is more than willing to sacrifice a feasible budget on the altar of political ideology.
Republicans attached billions of dollars worth of policy riders to the 2011 budget that include cuts to early childhood development programs, job training for unemployed workers and energy assistance for needy families and family planning programs. At the same time, the GOP defends spending 295 billion dollars this year on Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations.
While Republican dogma has reared its ugly head, Democrats are just as much to blame. They should have passed the budget when they held the majority in the house. Democrats feared an unfavorable outcome during the mid-term elections and stalled on the budget, hoping their indecision might give them a chance to come out on top. Their political maneuvering failed, and now Americans are paying for it.
With the 2012 presidential election looming, expect it to get worse. Republicans will aim to impress their constituents by proposing cuts based on divisive ideology rather than deficit reduction. Democrats will refuse to sign off on a budget containing socially conservative riders, and both parties will act and react to it all with the 2012 election in mind.
President Obama’s proposed budget for 2012 has been criticized for barely scraping the surface of the debt crisis. In February, Democratic chairman of Obama’s debt commission, Erskine Bowles, told the Washington Post that Obama’s budget goes “nowhere near where they will have to go to resolve our fiscal nightmare.”
Then there’s the House Republicans’ “Path to Prosperity” 2012 budget, issued by the chairman Representative Paul D. Ryan. The measure would trim 4 trillion dollars out of the deficit by drastically reducing entitlement spending while cutting taxes for the wealthy and giant corporations. Sound familiar?
It’s up to Congress to meet in the middle, somehow. That’s been their job all along. As the United States moves forward through recovery, the choices are only going to get harder. The extreme cuts proposed by the GOP for 2012 prove just that.
If our representatives don’t step back and set party-line politics aside, 2012 will be uglier than 2011. We could very well face eminent government shutdown at this same time next year.
Enough is enough.
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Posted by janahoffman on Apr 11 2011. Filed under Columns, Opinion, Sub Feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
[...] turn on Medicare hot seatFox NewsObama to call for broad plan to reduce debtSan Jose Mercury NewsFY 2012: Expect more of the sameBoise State University The Arbiter OnlineReuters -Washington Post -San Francisco [...]
[...] deal only cuts $38.5 billion in spending. That may sound like a huge amount but let’s put that into perspective. Our national debt [...]
Wow…just wow….
"Undoubtedly, this last round of indecision can be blamed on the Republicans." Really? That's a pretty definitive statement seeing as you later point out that Democrats could have done this last year…..when they held a super majority. But instead they held onto this political hay until it could be used as an effective tool. Then they held it up with the threat that United States military personnel wouldn't get paid if the Republicans wouldn't agree to their terms.
So remind us again how the Republicans got anything out of this? They cut literally NOTHING from the national debt, seeing as this budget is still higher than last years, none of their so called social cuts were passed. The only thing they achieved was forcing a vote on the repeal of Obamacare in the Senate which doesn't stand a hopes chance in hell. Ultimately they will vote to raise the budget ceiling and pass another stupid ridiculous budget that further sinks our nation so they can achieve re-election in 2012. Sounds like we all got hosed here and the Arbiter is hung up on its typical "Republican bad Democrat good" line. Good Job. Way to stay on the cutting edge.