What do we want? Tax breaks for the rich! When do we want ’em? Now! Brushing up on his cheerleader skills in Arkansas (as a not-so-veiled threat to Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln), Dubya demands that Congress speed up passage of his fatcat cut. But so far, the all stick and no carrot tactics of the Bushies are only continuing to tick off GOP moderates like Olympia Snowe.
Tag: Congress
Grey Poupon Economics.
Conceding defeat on the full dividend debacle (while still planning evasive maneuvers to make sure it’s as large as possible), the Congressional GOP now shift their focus to another Republican shibboleth: a capital gains cut. One way or another, it seems, the GOP are hell-bent on ensuring that the wealthiest Americans catch some kind of break from the Dubya dip.
Time Bandits.
With the House GOP prepared to make a deal with moderates, the White House unrolls a new pitch for the “future-embezzling” Dubya dividend debacle. Arguing that bigger is better on the assumption that there’s a 1-1 relationship between low taxes and more jobs, Dubya’s simplistic proposition has even ticked off GOP economists. (As one Republican put it when queried whether Dubya’s fuzzy math makes sense, “I suppose it matters whether you think economics matters.”) Meanwhile, Bill “kittenkiller” Frist takes the blame for congressional in-fighting on the size of the tax cut.
Hedging their Bets.
In the wake of Dubya’s embrace of preemption, historian Joyce Appleby wonders whatever happened to Congress as a center of foreign policy. As James Madison put it, “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Govts demonstrates, that the Ex. is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legisl. But the Doctrines lately advanced strike at the root of all these provisions, and will deposit the peace of the Country in that Department which the Constitution distrusts as most ready without cause to renounce it.” Looks like recent experience has proven him right.
Mmmm, bacon.
Yum. Both the Dubya administration and the Senate bloat up the war bill with pork barrel spending. As John McCain put it, “I didn’t realize that Al Qaeda had reached all the way to the South Pole.” Speaking of wartime handouts, Dems Henry Waxman and John Dingell want further scrutiny into contracts given to Halliburton subsidiaries by the GAO. All I know is, if the Clinton administration were involved in this type of quid pro quo, Dan Burton would have had an investigation up and running weeks ago.
No Representation with Taxation.
While still desperately in denial about the nation’s exploding debt, the GOP has, as expected, gone to war against its own moderate wing and threatened to sink the budget, in the hopes of preserving Dubya’s $726 billion tax giveaway. This is despite the fact that the Daschle Dems have in essence already capitulated again, agreeing to pass an equally wrong-headed compromise plan half that size. Sigh…the Dems really have to get it together. At any rate, hopefully moderate Republicans will take DeLay’s budget blackmail for the desperate, dangerous gamble it is and call him on it. Nothing screams GOP these days quite like a government shutdown.
Now for ruin, and a red dawn.
It looks like the worst-case scenario outlined by Alternet yesterday is coming about sooner than expected. Senator Orrin Hatch leads a GOP charge to eliminate the sunset provisions in the Patriot Act, thus making permanent the sweeping antiterrorism provisions of the first bill and setting the stage for PATRIOT II. Let’s hope Hatch doesn’t have the votes.
The Gentleman From New York.
R.I.P. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan 1927-2003. At a time when the Democratic party needs articulate, intelligent, and principled statespersons more than ever, we lose one of the big ones. He will be missed.
Smokescreen.
A Texas D.A. has achieved what once seemed impossible: getting the Exterminator to shut up. GOP freakshow and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay remains mum on reports that one of his PACs is on the wrong side of the law. Another story that hopefully doesn’t get lost in the crevasses between war coverage.
Taxing Times.
Despite the administration’s attempt to use the war to promote tax cuts, the Senate does the right thing and slashes Dubya’s tax giveaway in half. As I said last week, it’s almost obscene to even consider this type of deficit-busting sop for the rich when America’s fighting men and women are laying their lives on the line. In times of war, even (gasp!) the affluent must bear their share of sacrifice.