What's The Harm In Budget Cuts?

[Nancy Boy]

At what point does one put one's foot down against budget cuts? Both the Texas Government and the Federal Government are both in heaps of debt and both are looking to save as much money as possible.

In Texas, Burnt Orange Report says that Perry and others are asking for an extra 5% cut in the state budget. The Budget has already had its cuts and BOR notes, "One Republican described their demand as 'cutting bone.'"

It made me instantly think of the budget cuts schools have to make, to the point where Teachers are picking up the slack, using their money to pay for teaching materials and school supplies. If you own a business and you're making your workers fund the daily operations, then you're being negligent. Your business isn’t going to survive long (unless, of course, you have friends in high places).

At what point do you cut a state’s budget and find that the departments are hardly effective? That the cuts actually interfere with the department’s work? One has to wonder if that’s the point to massive under-funding of government--you can eventually point to its eventual failure and claim that you were right all along that big government doesn’t work. And, at the same time, you ease the tax burden of your friends and connections, so they can have more yachts or you can have a business opportunity in the future.

[sonias]

1. Gang member mentality

The old gang:
Rick Perry, Tom Craddick, and David Dewhurst -- also known as "The Gang of 3" - these 3 wingnuts are the strangulation team in Texas. Or more appropriately the drowning team. Their goal - make government small enough to drown in a bathtub ala Grover Norquist. Their hero.

The new gang
Meet the new gang of 3 - same as the old gang. Switch out Joe Stauss for old speaker Craddick and you see no difference, except Strauss is younger.

It's an election year so you know that the "no new taxes" crew is going to scream for budget cuts - across the board. Wholesale cutting rather than really govern and target them. On the other hand if you let them decide where to target - they would eliminate the safety net entirely. They hate safety net programs. "Let those sick and starving people - bootstrap themselves up!"

You can just hear the republicans channeling Scrooge:

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? ... they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.' ...If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. "

School cuts are no problem for them either - the general philosophy of the republican party is the "free education system" shouldn't be free. It should be reserved for the children of elites. If the public school system gets so decrepit as to be worthless, they know that private schools would serve fine for their kids.

They would really like that. A whole uneducated workforce "forced to work for low wages" to cater to them.

That's why we Democrats fight - to keep the republican's warped sense of reality from coming to be.
:dem:

Sonia

[Lithos]

2. These are the same ones

Who think slavery was a good idea and Charles Dickens was a communist for writing about the abuses of the "Poor Law" in Oliver Twist.

L-