Spokane7
61°
March 20, 2011 in Opinion
Dana Milbank: House actions fuel public skepticism
House Republicans called an “emergency meeting” this week, suspending the usual procedures to rush an urgent piece of legislation to the floor.
Had the new majority finally come up with a job-creation bill? A compromise with Democrats to rein in the deficit?
Not quite. Republicans, in an urgent budget-cutting maneuver, were voting to cut off funding for National Public Radio. All $5 million of it – or one ten-thousandth of 1 percent of the federal budget.
Five minutes after acting on this budgetary emergency, House Republicans voted to continue the war in Afghanistan – which costs about $10 billion. Per month. They then flew home for a vacation.
“I wish,” longtime Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., said in a moment of candor, “this could have been handled a little differently.”
President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner both say they want an “adult conversation” about the nation’s problems. But so far the discussion resembles one that might be heard on a school bus.
Democrats would have been in a good position to point out the Republicans’ lack of seriousness, except they were engaged in their own trivial pursuit. On Thursday, the same day the Republicans were doing battle with Diane Rehm, the House was also debating a bill by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, ordering full withdrawal from Afghanistan by year end. Kucinich recently established his gravitas by suing the House cafeteria over an olive pit he found in his lunch.
Thanks to Obama’s veto pen, it was clear even before the debate that nothing would come of either proposal. Nor should it. Neither a vindictive slap at public broadcasting nor a pell-mell pullout from Afghanistan would be good policy – particularly when Americans want action on the economy.
The lack of grown-up behavior is driving Americans to despair. In the new Washington Post/ABC News poll, only 26 percent said they were optimistic about the future when “thinking about our system of government and how well it works.” That’s less than half the level of optimism felt in 1974, during Watergate.
Large majorities scold both parties for refusing to compromise, and two-thirds of Americans grasp what lawmakers on both sides won’t accept: We need both spending cuts and tax increases to solve the fiscal mess. Republicans in particular have seen a swift loss of trust in their ability to handle the deficit and the economy, and little wonder. They won the House majority pledging to deal with jobs and the budget and instead are tackling Planned Parenthood and NPR.
In the end, the Democrats proved somewhat more adult in restraining impulses. Party leaders opposed Kucinich’s Afghanistan pullout plan as irresponsible, and most Democrats voted against it.
The Republicans, however, were not as easily dissuaded from folly. During the debate over Afghanistan, cost was no object. “War is expensive and it should not be measured in the cost of money,” said Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas. But the 0.0001 percent of the budget going to NPR was a fiscal emergency.
“It’s about saving taxpayer money,” proclaimed Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., the Republican floor leader.
But this was undercut by freshman Rep. Rich Nugent, R-Fla., who argued that “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves in is sinful and tyrannical.” Tyrannical? “We are not trying to harm NPR,” he added. “We are actually trying to liberate them from federal tax dollars.”
Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., in his speech, complained that NPR’s “programming often veers far from what most Americans would like.” He said NPR was being targeted because it advocates “one ideology.”
And everybody knows what ideology that is. It’s the ideology of Click and Clack, from Car Talk. New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democratic troublemaker, came to the floor with a poster pleading “Save Click & Clack.”
“The American people are not concerned about jobs and the economy,” Weiner said sardonically. “They’re staring at their radio, saying, ‘Get rid of Click and Clack.’ Finally, my Republican friends are doing it. Kudos to you!”
Dana Milbank is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group. His email address is danamilbank@washpost.com.
Trudy Rubin: Egyptians say no to Islamists 
ChefGus/ John Olsen on March 20 at 6:02 a.m.
I’d like to liberate my tax dollars from the war in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya … bring home our troops and balance our state budgets with the savings/funds. john
mikeln on March 20 at 6:56 a.m.
Ten billion a month in afghanistan and this is just what we are being told is being spent. Is there another twenty or so being spent on the private contractors over there? I, for one, am tired of the people in charge of my government lieing to me. It is time to bring our troops home, get our money back from these war mongers that have got us into these wars for profit and throw their mangy asses in jail where they belong, cheany and bush come to mind for the jail part. We are being told people that could not possibly be at fault for this mess are the ones to blame, all the while the crimminals that are to blame weekend at their beach house, what a joke. These people are not the majority they just have the money to control the media to make you think they are. We need to take our country back from these pukes and do to them what they would do to us. Stock up, it’s going to be a interesting year.
Orphan on March 20 at 7:43 a.m.
John Liberating our tax dollars form the wars will not come close to fixing our budget, its going to take a lot more than that.
ChefGus/ John Olsen on March 20 at 7:47 a.m.
Perhaps… but it is a start…. and we have to start somewhere that represents more than 50 per cent of the total spending we do…. simple for me… take care of our own youth etc…. or kill other peoples youth? which side do you want to be on../?? j
Arch_Druid on March 20 at 8:26 a.m.
Dana Milbank’s editorial was both hilarious and absolutely to the point. I love this guy for his “a pox on both their houses” editorial approach.
Looks like Pete Scobby is absolutely vindicated as to the letter of his that was published yesterday.
So, when you elect children to do the jobs of men, what do you think will happen? Only what Mr. Milbank editorialized about.
berrybestfarm on March 20 at 9:20 a.m.
Just how do we take back our government? Elections don’t seem to be working. I had a radical thought that we could try a jury type system where those who voted in the last election have their names “put in the hat” and a group is drawn at random. Could it be any worse than what we end up with now?
Seriously, we have to get the money out of politics. We The People need to use our power to amend our Constitutions to get the money out of politics. We can start by only allowing public financing of public offices to ensure representation of public interests.
Dennis Patterson—Deer Park
Orphan on March 20 at 9:25 a.m.
John We cant cut out all defense spending but we can cut the waste out. We can also cut the waste out of the Dept of Agriculture, Energy, Treasury and Health and Human services. Now that would be a good start. Along witgh SS they are the largest expenditures and are the only real way to get our budget under control.
kkrimmer on March 20 at 10:00 a.m.
Conservatives would have stopped the Internet from happening. It’s common knowledge that the conservative Republican party hates the National Science Foundation. It was the NSF that made the Internet happen, they had the vision to open the door to the world. http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_nsfnet.htm
July 1, 1956. The Steve Allen Show, New York City. “As Elvis rehearsed for an appearance on The Steve Allen Show, national media buzzed with backlash against Elvis’s hip-swinging performance on Milton Berle’s show just a few weeks earlier. Conservative critics called Elvis a “disciple of the devil.”
Conservatives fear a free society, trying to control what people do… whether it’s in Iran or the USA! Conservatives are bad for America.
johnclarke on March 20 at 11:12 a.m.
Orphan, exactly how will Social Security get the budget under control ? I’m curious, since it takes in more money than it pays out. A Republican talking point you say ? Oh.
mikeln on March 20 at 11:35 a.m.
Thank you, berrybestfarm, you are right. As long as money is the main thing in politics, the real work of the people will not get done. The jury idea is as good as any, this way millionares will not be the only people running the peoples government. We need to demand a election that asks one question, do we want the current government or do we want them all out and hold new elections with public money only. If it were truly a honest election, these people would be looking for new jobs. One more thing, we need to get rid of the D.C. insiders like cheany and rumsfield and rove that hang around for years and years and somtimes become more powerfull then any elected official. Remember cheany and rumsfield standing behind nixon when he resigned? I do.
WillyPeter on March 20 at 1:16 p.m.
Kkrimmer - Set the example and tell the truth. After all, someone on this thread needs to do it. For example, all of us who post here know that it was Al Gore who invented the internet……:-)
Orphan on March 20 at 1:32 p.m.
Johnclark I did not say anything about SS cutting the budget or saving money all I said was SS was one of our largest expendatures. We need to make cuts in more places than I mentioned the cuts need to be all across the board. There is huge waste in our goverment, I saw it all the time in goverment contracts. Things like polished stainless steel railing in a secure facility that no one but the security people ever saw, galvanized railing at 1/10th of the cost would have been fine. I could go on and on.
At some point in time we will also have to make some changes to SS but that is another story.
pinkbutter on March 20 at 1:38 p.m.
As far as balencing the budget, how about starting with the entitlements. Any budget plan that seriously wants to keep our debt from getting worse and worse needs to make any entitlements sustainable.
johnclarke on March 20 at 6:55 p.m.
Orphan, my point is Social Security had NOTHING to do with spending or the debt so why does the right endlessly blab about it? Answer: Because they are obsessed with it. I’m not sure why, since 40% of all seniors count on it to stay out of the poor house. I assume some of them are Republicans.
How are those jobs bills coming in the House? Let’s see…a total of none. Zero. Nada.
misjustice on March 20 at 7:20 p.m.
“They” blab about it because they want to privatize it; it’s a large chunk of money that the Wallsters want to get their grubby, greedy hands on.
Remember W’s attempt to try and sell privatization as part of his “ownership society” dribble???? Seniors gave him the smack down but it doesn’t mean that the Republican’ts won’t keep trying to give that money to the Wallsters…they’ll just have to be sneakier this time.
johnclarke on March 20 at 8:58 p.m.
I know, spare me the lecture Hawken :)
I think the truth is the Republican talking points are so drilled into these drones, they simply can’t help themselves. Ronald Reagan reformed SS, and apparently he did a good job. It’s generating huge surplus dollars, promptly borrowed by …..um…us.
Republicans hate social security because it works, and will continue to work. Certain things are too important to be left to chance, or Republicans.