{"id":5555,"date":"2005-10-17T14:15:05","date_gmt":"2005-10-17T18:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/5555.html"},"modified":"2005-10-17T14:15:05","modified_gmt":"2005-10-17T18:15:05","slug":"house-republicans-find-their-scissors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/house-republicans-find-their-scissors\/","title":{"rendered":"House Republicans find their scissors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recent polling data suggests only about a third<\/a> of Americans approve of how the Republican-dominated Congress is doing its job, the lowest in a decade. A new NBC poll shows voters preferring a Dem-run Congress<\/a> by a fairly wide margin. All the while, the Republican establishment seems to be drowning before our very eyes under a sea of indictments and investigations.<\/p>\n

House GOP lawmakers have considered this landscape and appear to have stumbled upon a plan to make things worse<\/a> for themselves.<\/p>\n

House Republican leaders have moved from balking at big cuts in Medicaid and other programs to embracing them, driven by pent-up anger from fiscal conservatives concerned about runaway spending and the leadership’s own weakening hold on power.<\/p>\n

Beginning this week, the House GOP lawmakers will take steps to cut as much as $50 billion from the fiscal 2006 budget for health care for the poor, food stamps and farm supports, as well as considering across-the-board cuts in other programs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I suppose these Republicans deserve some credit for re-discovering their principles. These guys are supposed<\/i> to want to slash health care for the poor. The fact that Tom DeLay, among others, recently said<\/a> the federal budget no longer had any areas to be cut showed that the GOP had lost its way, but reports like this one suggest they’re anxious to embrace the draconian ideals that have defined the party for a generation.<\/p>\n

But the funny part is that House GOP lawmakers seem unaware or unconcerned about the political consequences.
\n
\nFor reasons that defy comprehension, these guys are under the impression that slashing domestic spending will be a popular<\/i> move. If we’re really lucky, they’ll keep on thinking that. <\/p>\n

For a party already on the ropes with corruption and mismanagement crises, picking a fight by attacking the poor is enough to make one wonder if the GOP prefers to just give up its majority status altogether. Imagine the TV ads for a vulnerable House incumbent: “Rep. Doe voted to slash health care for families in poverty while backing billions in giveaways for oil companies and pharmaceutical companies. There’s got to a better way…”<\/p>\n

What’s more, this is just the House. These Republicans can rally behind massive cuts in domestic spending, only to find that they’ve done so for no reason because the Senate won’t go along.<\/p>\n

But if the House GOP has its heart set on this, there’s no reason to stand in their way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recent polling data suggests only about a third of Americans approve of how the Republican-dominated Congress is doing its job, the lowest in a decade. A new NBC poll shows voters preferring a Dem-run Congress by a fairly wide margin. All the while, the Republican establishment seems to be drowning before our very eyes under […]<\/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-5555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5555","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=5555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}