GOP Budget: Defund Gov. & Subsidize the Wealthy

Ol' Money Bags: "We love the Republicans.
They are so easy.
 Just throw money at their feet,
and they will fall over themselves
picking it up."

Today (3/2/11) Congress kicked the budget can down the road to avoid a government shut-down. The Republicans don't want that to happen. The last time, when Newt Gingrich shut it down, the country became dramatically aware of how important the government really is.


But the budget problem will have to be solved. The Republicans while protecting their special interests and their subsidies want a $61 billion reduction, and as is so often the case these days, refuse to negotiate. The Democrats today went along with some mutually agreeable cuts, but cannot tolerate the cuts the GOP is proposing. These are just some of the cuts directed at the working middle class and the working poor by the GOP, their lobbyists, and the Koch brothers:


1. They want to defund the new health care law. The result - health insurance companies would decide whether you get coverage and how much you will pay. It would eliminate a provision that at least 80 % of your health care premium would be spent on health care. The insurance company could spent as much as it wanted on CEO salaries and golf outings.


2.This budget would eliminate funds for the homeless veterans. No matter that these men and women put their lives on the line and suffered a wide array of psychological and physical injures and are now wandering our streets and sleeping under over-passes.


3. This budget is under-cutting enforcement of  new food safety reforms. Their donors at the large agricultural corporations do not want the government preventing them from selling suspect or tainted foods.


4. The Republicans in the House want to cut the budget for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by 40%, thus reducing its ability to protect consumers from abuses by financial institutions who are a favorite Republican charity.


5. They also want to defund  NPR and PBS in an attempt to eliminate a news source which examines issues in depth and from various perspectives.  If they could eliminate these guys, corporations like Fox News  would not appear so ridiculously biased.


Obviously this is just a very short list of what the Republicans want to cut or defund. On the other hand, consider just two of the things they want to subsidize.


1. Agricultural subsidies, long recognized as "welfare for the wealthy," are not being eliminated. They want to continue to subsidize these fat cats, perhaps because these guys dump tons of money into their campaign war chests.


2. While they want to defund  programs to develop clean energy and renewable energy, they are hell-bent on subsidizing giant oil companies ($4 billion) and providing them with tax breaks.


There seems to be little doubt that the plutocrats  have chosen to declare war on the middle class and the working poor in order to confiscate more of the country's wealth for themselves, and they are funding the Republican Party to be their mercenaries.