As U.S. budget fight looms, Republicans flip their fiscal script

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Kittamaru, Jan 1, 2018.

  1. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    13,938
    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-bu...s-flip-fiscal-script-205657527--business.html

    The head of a conservative Republican faction in the U.S. Congress, who voted this month for a huge expansion of the national debt to pay for tax cuts, called himself a "fiscal conservative" on Sunday and urged budget restraint in 2018.

    In keeping with a sharp pivot under way among Republicans, U.S. Representative Mark Meadows, speaking on CBS' "Face the Nation," drew a hard line on federal spending, which lawmakers are bracing to do battle over in January.

    President Donald Trump and his Republicans want a big budget increase in military spending, while Democrats also want proportional increases for non-defense "discretionary" spending on programs that support education, scientific research, infrastructure, public health and environmental protection.

    "The (Trump) administration has already been willing to say: 'We're going to increase non-defense discretionary spending ... by about 7 percent,'" Meadows, chairman of the small but influential House Freedom Caucus, said on the program.

    "Now, Democrats are saying that's not enough, we need to give the government a pay raise of 10 to 11 percent. For a fiscal conservative, I don't see where the rationale is. ... Eventually you run out of other people's money," he said.

    Meadows was among Republicans who voted in late December for their party's debt-financed tax overhaul, which is expected to balloon the federal budget deficit and add about $1.5 trillion over 10 years to the $20 trillion national debt.


    "It's interesting to hear Mark talk about fiscal responsibility," Democratic U.S. Representative Joseph Crowley said on CBS.

    Ah, the hypocrisy we all know and hate!

    House Speaker Paul Ryan, who also supported the tax bill, recently went further than Meadows, making clear in a radio interview that welfare or "entitlement reform," as the party often calls it, would be a top Republican priority in 2018.

    In Republican parlance, "entitlement" programs mean food stamps, housing assistance, Medicare and Medicaid health insurance for the elderly, poor and disabled, as well as other programs created by Washington to assist the needy.

    Democrats seized on Ryan's early December remarks, saying they showed Republicans would try to pay for their tax overhaul by seeking spending cuts for social programs.
    And there it is.
     
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  3. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    Wasn't it, Hillary, while first lady, really push her husband on getting universal health care?
     
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  5. birch Valued Senior Member

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    well, you know, it's the poor's fault for not being shareholders and lobbyists in corporations. it's not like politicians will be honest in saying what that really mean which is free or not actually earned money. oh, they call it investment where your money works for you. not that is totally wrong but if you are going to start naming entitlements, then corporate welfare is a form of entitlement.
     
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  7. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    The logic is simple: create more debt and demand we need to spend less to not create more debt, basically cut taxes so the programs are in debt and then demand the programs be truncated to match income. With the exception of the military of course, lets not try to make sense of that hypocrisy.
     
  8. Neddy Bate Valued Senior Member

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    2,548
    It would be nice if Democratic representatives could be a little more forceful in their condemnation of things like this. Maybe he said more, I don't know, I'm only going by the quotes.
     
  9. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    Maybe the doomsday prepers are the smart ones?
    Alex
     
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    No.
    Starting about thirty five years ago. It's a bit late now.

    To be fair, the communication media available to them has been in the hands of corporate right since Reagan's tenure - they needed courage and willingness to back principle in the face of media hostility and condemnation. Some had it, most did not.
     

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