The Crackpot Caucus in the House of Representatives (i.e., Republicans) are out with their FY 2016 budget and, hoo-boy, it's a nasty piece of work (surprise!). Here to briefly summarize is the estimable Charles Pierce:
The Republican majority in the House of Representatives has revealed its budget plan, and that plan has as its apparent goal the cruel, blasted dystopia of Paul Ryan's fondest dreams. This budget is in no way either sensible or patriotic. It is not patriotism to throw so many of your fellow citizens out On The Road, as the old Irish used to say. This is a gombeen's budget, a slumlord's budget, an evictor's budget, an auctioneer's budget of a kind that emptied towns all over the Great Plains. It assumes the existence of a propertied class and a servile class, both of them eternal and immutable. It is as democratic as a brick through a window.Repeal Obamacare. Check.
Repeal Medicare expansion under Obamacare. Check.
Partially privatize Medicare. Check.
Block grant Medicaid to the states. Check.
Repeal parts of Dodd-Frank financial institution reforms. Check.
Convert Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ("food stamps") into state-run programs. Check.
Lower taxes for corporations and the wealthy. Check.
That covers the Ultra-Right Wingnut Agenda pretty well. More Charles Pierce:
There should be no compromise from the Democratic minority on any of this. It should be rejected, root and branch, because it is based on an economic philosophy, and an overall view of the relationship between people and their government, that has failed the country and its people savagely in the past and inevitably will do so again. But, even if this budget goes nowhere, it should doom the Republican party as a serious governing party for the next two decades, but it won't. Its basic philosophical foundation has been treated as a serious intellectual exercise for so long that it is now beside the point that it stands revealed (again) as a plutocratic charade. Pieces of it will be debated gravely. Some of them may even survive as "compromises" because Americans want "the government to work again." (I just saved Joe Manchin's press staff a ton of work right there.) But the philosophy itself is so deeply embedded in our politics that I'm not sure that enough people can sicken and/or die before we pry it out again.That basic Republican/ plutocratic philosophy being, "I've got mine, to hell with anyone else." So we have yet another Republican budget that enshrines that dystopian philosophy for all to see, if they have eyes and are willing to see.
