{"id":5277,"date":"2005-09-16T10:57:37","date_gmt":"2005-09-16T14:57:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5277"},"modified":"2005-09-16T10:57:37","modified_gmt":"2005-09-16T14:57:37","slug":"a-deep-and-widening-rift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-deep-and-widening-rift\/","title":{"rendered":"A deep and widening rift"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just a week ago, as lawmakers began to appreciate the costs associated with Gulf Coast relief efforts, a few Republicans went off-message<\/a> and wondered aloud how we’ll pay for all of this. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said Bush has “failed a test of leadership<\/a>” by not including spending cuts to pay for part of the spending. Florida Senator Mel Martinez (R) went so far as to say, “There ought to be another look at the tax cuts<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

And now that the president has signaled his willingness to spend freely and with no constraints, a growing number of Republicans are wondering what ever happened<\/a> to the party’s support for fiscal restraint.<\/p>\n

The drive to pour tens of billions of federal dollars into rebuilding the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast is widening a fissure among Republicans over fiscal policy, with more of them expressing worry about unbridled spending.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, even before President Bush promised that “federal funds will cover the great majority of the costs of repairing public infrastructure in the disaster zone,” fiscal conservatives from the House and Senate joined budget watchdog groups in demanding that the administration be judicious in asking for taxpayer dollars.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Coburn appears to be the ringleader, but he’s not alone. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), and John McCain (R-Ariz.) are making similar noises. And they’re just the ones going on the record.<\/p>\n

[M]any Republicans are increasingly edgy about the White House’s push for a potentially open-ended recovery budget, worried that the president – in trying to regroup politically – was making expensive promises they would have to keep. <\/p>\n

“We are not sure he knows what he is getting into<\/b>,” said one senior House Republican official who requested anonymity because of the potential consequences of publicly criticizing the administration. (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Coburn has said he’d consider putting off<\/a> some of Bush’s tax cuts, while Newt Gingrich even said tax increases<\/i> should be on the table<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Republicans have all the power, but four competing goals — spend their way out of a political problem, preserve tax cuts, lower the deficit, and avoid steep spending cuts (which Tom DeLay says is literally impossible<\/a>) before next year’s election. They can’t even agree among themselves about how much to spend, where to cut, or even if deficits matter<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Something’s going to have to give here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just a week ago, as lawmakers began to appreciate the costs associated with Gulf Coast relief efforts, a few Republicans went off-message and wondered aloud how we’ll pay for all of this. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said Bush has “failed a test of leadership” by not including spending cuts to pay for part of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}