{"id":3393,"date":"2010-11-17T02:15:22","date_gmt":"2010-11-17T10:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3393"},"modified":"2010-11-17T02:15:22","modified_gmt":"2010-11-17T10:15:22","slug":"the-republicans-favorite-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/17\/the-republicans-favorite-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"The Republicans’ Favorite Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"17Natl_Debt_Chart\"<\/font><\/p>\n

What is it?  The Republicans\u2019 favorite lie is that they are the party of fiscal responsibility.  That\u2019s the common wisdom.  That\u2019s what we keep hearing on the TV.  It\u2019s those big spending Democrats and responsible Republicans.  The only problem with this is that it is indeed a lie.  One of the ways Republicans say they will slash spending is with a moratorium  on earmarks.  That is another lie.  First of all earmarks account for only $16 billion out of $3.5 trillion.  They are insignificant.   More important, abolishing earmarks will not reduce the federal deficit by one penny.  Once the budget is set, it\u2019s set.  That amount of money will be spent.  Earmarks merely decide how that portion is spent.  Without them a bureaucrat decides how it\u2019s spent.  So all this Republican hoopla is just a distraction from the real issue.  They intend to increase the debt by hundreds of billions of dollars, almost two trillion, in fact.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Senate Republicans voted Tuesday to abandon the use of budget earmarks that direct money to favored projects, setting up an unusual alliance with the White House and exerting pressure on reluctant Democratic lawmakers to follow suit.<\/p>\n

The vote by the GOP caucus for a two-year moratorium on earmarks is not binding on its members, but it provided an early example of the influence of the conservative "tea party" movement after the midterm election. House Republicans are expected to take a similar step Thursday.<\/p>\n

Just eight months ago, a proposal to do away with earmarks was shot down in an overwhelming vote of the Senate that included substantial Republican opposition.<\/p>\n

Republican and Democratic supporters of the earmark moratorium said they would push for a floor vote that would be binding on all senators, and a promise from President Obama to veto any spending bill containing earmarks.<\/p>\n

Democratic leaders face a difficult decision on how to proceed. They show no inclination for doing away with earmark expenditures, even as Obama has expressed his desire to limit the practice and newer Democratic senators have sided with him and Republicans on the issue.<\/p>\n

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), an unabashed earmark supporter whose reelection victory was due in part to his success at steering federal dollars to his home state, said Tuesday, "I am not going, personally, going to back off of bringing stuff back to Nevada."\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <LA Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

Actually I favor the moratorium, because earmarks are a way Senators and Representatives with seniority pay political debts and get a disproportionate share of spending for their states and districts.  They make the spending more wasteful.<\/font><\/p>\n

Rachel Maddow did a great piece on Republican plans to balloon the debt.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Can there now be any doubt that Democrats, however wasteful, are the far more fiscally responsible party?<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is it?  The Republicans\u2019 favorite lie is that they are the party of fiscal responsibility.  That\u2019s the common wisdom.  That\u2019s what we keep hearing on the TV.  It\u2019s those big spending Democrats and responsible Republicans.  The only problem with this is that it is indeed a lie.  One of the ways Republicans say they […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}