According to the pundits and political professionals, the Republicans' overwhelming victory was due in large part to their message that "Elitists like Obama, Pelosi and Reid have been fiddlin' while our economy burns." And again, unless I'm having a "junior moment," I don't recall the Fall campaign containing much Republican bloviation on such hot-button issues as abortion, same-sex marriage or the need to once and for all stick it to labor unions by denying or severely abridging their collective bargaining rights. No, they kept those issues largely out of sight . . . until right after the moment of victory.
It seems that ever since the 112th Congress swore to uphold the
Constitution, the GOP has been on a relentless quest not to create new
jobs or bring the budget into balance, but rather to defund, defame and
debunk every last vestige of the New Deal, Fair Deal and Great
Society. According to the preachments emanating from the right side of
the aisle, defunding OSHA (Occupational Safety & Health
Administration), FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) EPA
(Environmental Protection Agency) Planned Parenthood and National Public
Radio -- as but five examples -- will go a long way towards cutting
deficits and balancing the budget. The same preachments can be heard in
the various states where legislatures -- which must, by constitutional
statute have balanced budgets -- are using the current economic crisis
to take meat cleavers to public education, Medicaid, AFDC (Aid to
Families with Dependent Children) and unemployment insurance. Here in
Florida, where House and Senate Democrats could easily caucus in my
kitchen, the legislature has decided that in order for those who are
unemployed to qualify for assistance, they will have to volunteer
upwards of 4 hours of their a week to some cause. And, to add insult to
injury, they are in the process of cutting the amount of time the
unemployed can receive that assistance. Moreover, they have just
overwhelmingly passed a measure which will henceforth turn a blind eye
towards tenure or advanced degrees and tie teacher pay to how well their
students do on a single standardized test. What in the name of John
Dewey does this have to do with fiscal responsibility . . . let alone
education?
And before you ask about the revenue side of the equation, the Florida
legislature, with the blessing of our new Governor -- Rick "Let's Get
to Work" Scott -- has decided that cutting both corporate and property
taxes will go a long way towards lifting the Sunshine State out of its
fiscal doldrums. "Cutting corporate and property taxes is an extremely
effective way of inducing businesses to relocate to Florida," Governor
Scott has said. "And these new businesses will of course bring with
them plenty of new jobs."
I for one do not understand how gutting public education can help lure business to Florida. I would have thought that businesses are more likely to relocate to places where the quality and commitment to public education ranks high. Then again, perhaps I'm just having a junior moment and forgot an important part of the equation.
Just this week, the House of Representatives, by a vote of 228 to 192
passed a bill to defund National Public Radio. True to form,
Republicans said their decision to deny NPR federal funding made good
fiscal sense; Democrats termed the vote "an ideological attack" that
would deprive local stations access to such programs as "Car Talk,"
"Morning Edition," "All Things Considered," and "Wait, Wait Don't Tell
Me." For the most part, Republicans are being disingenuous; they
consider National Public Radio to be a biased (read: leftist) news
source with a largely elitist (read: Democratic) listening audience. The
desire to defund NPR has been gaining steam for many years. It
received a major boost with last October's firing of longtime news
commentator Juan Williams, and peaked with the release of gonzo
muckraker James O'Keefe III's video purportedly showing a major NPR
fundraiser accepting bribe money from fake Muslims in order to secure
favorable news coverage. As with O'Keefe's videos involving ACORN,
Planned Parenthood and Shirley Sherrod, this one proved to be an
atrociously-edited fake. And yet, despite incontrovertible proof that
the fundraiser never said that NPR could get along better without
federal funding (which amounts to all of $5 million a year), and made it
clear to the "Muslims" that NPR's coverage was not for sale, that was
the final straw. People believe what they want to believe . . .
Although there is room for honest disagreement over whether we the people can afford (from a strictly financial point of view) to continue funding NPR, this is not, in truth, what the argument is about; any more than the Wisconsin legislature's move to deny collective bargaining rights to public employee unions has anything whatsoever to do with fiscal sanity. In the case of Congress, if it were truly about acting with a modicum of fiscal responsibility, House Republicans would not be so uniformly in favor of continuing federal funding for NASCAR. (Yes, you read that right: NASCAR. The Federal government provides NASCAR teams and track owners some $45 million in tax breaks which, both House Republicans and the Pentagon claim "helps military recruitment and could help save jobs . . .")
If there is any logic here, I don't get it.
Must be one of those junior moments . . .
-2011 Kurt F. Stone
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