Thursday, May 26, 2011

'Prince of Pork' no more?

Via Ezra Klein:

Forget Paul Ryan, appropriations chair Hal Rogers is the real GOP hatchet man, writes Suzy Khimm: "Two weeks ago, Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, made the GOP's next big move to slash spending for social programs. In a little-noticed proposal, Rogers detailed how the GOP wants to inflict the pain of more than $1 trillion in unspecified discretionary spending cuts contained in Ryan's 2012 budget, which passed the House in April...Under his proposal, the poor and the working class will be hardest-hit. On Tuesday, Rogers kicked off the GOP's budget-cutting party in the House, deciding which programs should pay the price. Rogers has focused on capping labor, health, and education spending at $139 billion--$18 billion less than the 2011 budget and $41 billion below what President Obama proposed in his own 2012 budget."
The key words here are "unspecified discretionary spending cuts," which means there's no need yet for any constituency to step forward and demand that their particular programs be restored. It's very easy to vote for spending cuts when the cuts aren't yet named.

Here's Jim's take on putting Hal Rogers in charge of the U.S. House appropriators.

1 comment:

Hempy said...

This is the usual Republican feudalist agenda of looking out for the lords of the manor and to hell with the serfs.

No capitalistic proposals to find new sources of revenue when there are many out their albeit controlled by the criminal elements.

$4-trillion-a-day in foreign exchange derivatives; $600 trillion annually in domestic derivatives; $1.5 trillion annually in bank laundered drug money, and, campaign contributions.

A small, proportional rate tax that maxed out at 5% would bring trillions into the treasury. No need to cut programs that benefit the Middle Class or the working poor.

Rep. Rodgers is another morally and spiritually bankrupt Republican (feudalist) who neither understand nor cares one whit for the common good, or promoting the general welfare.