Tags
Billy Long, Budget cuts, Deficit, missouri, Senate, Vicky Hartzler
By now everybody knows that House Republicans have proposed massive cuts to discretionary spending in the name of cutting the deficit – never mind that such cuts, while wreaking havoc in the lives of middle and working class Americans, will do almost nothing to deal with the actual deficit. Or never mind that the deficit could be halved by 2021 if these same GOPers weren’t so hellbent on preserving the Bush tax cuts – cuts that are one of the main reasons we have a deficit to start with. Or never mind that many of the cuts will actually drive up federal spending and increase the deficit in the long run (see also here).
Many of us have been somewhat bemusedly watching these antics, hoping that the Senate’s usually rather spineless Democratic majority will, for once, provide a bulwark against the GOP cost cutting charade. Recently, in an effort to pressure the Senate to do just the opposite, our obstreperous little GOPers have produced one of those group publicity stunts letters wherein they figuratively stamp their collective GOP feet and demand that the Senate Democratic majority follow their ill-informed, ideologically driven lead and pass the self-assertion exercise disguised as a budget that they have sent forward, national welfare be damned. Prominent among the signers of this epistle is Missouri’s own Billy Long (R-7) and Vicky Hartzler (R-4).
In fact, as the Turner Report notes, in her latest newsletter, Miss Vicky waxes eloquent about the heroic resolve to deal with the depredations of big government spending that led her to sign this insolent opus:
The previous Congress failed to pass a budget for 2011, forcing new Members to deal with the mess left behind. We have come up with proposals that cut spending and create jobs, but the Senate will not do its job. Mr. Reid, pass a bill!
I’d like Senator Reid to pass a bill too – just not the slap-dash atrocity put together by the intellectual midgets that the Tea Party sent to Washington D.C. For one thing, contrary to Hartzler’s assertion, their proposals will do the exact opposite of creating jobs – their simple-minded approach to cost-cutting could actually lead to a 700,000 job loss. That’s not a comforting prospect to those of us who live in the real world and who want to see the economic recovery continue.
The other problem with Hartzler’s zeal, however, lies in the fact that she supports a bill that ignores some real budgetary fat – oil and agricultural subsidies, for instance. I know that Miss Vicky knows about at least one of these unnecessary giveaways because she’s one of those on the dole. As ABC’s Good Morning America noted today:
… some of the Tea Party’s leaders have a case of “Hill Hypocrisy” for attacking government spending while taking millions in government money. ABC’s senior political correspondent Jonathan Karl reported “the Tea Party movement is all about slashing federal spending, but at least five House members with Tea Party connections have themselves collected more than $100,000 each in federal farm subsidies, totalling [sic] more than $8 million since 1995.
One of those five agricultural welfare recipients is little Miss Vicky. So before Hartzler – who likes to boast about her Christian credentials – signs any more letters demanding that the Senate Democrats cut spending that benefits the poor and the middle class, not to mention our economic recovery, she ought to consider the scriptural admonition, found in John 8:7, that only he who is without sin should cast stones.
Senate Bill 113, which seeks to amend Proposition B, will go before the House Agriculture Policy Committee today. SB 113 passed in the Senate earlier and is now before the House – which already voted in favor of an identical House bill, HB 131 last month. Sadly, SB113 is probably a done deal – although when the stakes are high, as they are for the animals affected, one should never give up. This, according to an email urging action that I received today, is what SB113/95 and HB 131 would do: