House GOP Leadership Rejects Spending Offsets

by Steve Soto

Remember all that talk last week from the White House about finding spending reductions or offsets to pay for Katrina, and now Rita recovery efforts? Forget it. The House GOP leadership says there is no political support for any spending cuts, or to even pursue the wet dreams of many conservatives to gun for domestic pet peeves to pay for the recovery effort. This should make for some fun caucus meetings with their far right conservative block.

The truth is that DeLay and Hastert know any pursuit of these budget cuts by the GOP puts the tax cuts back on the table, as well as Pentagon spending. And DeLay and Hastert, as well as the White House, would rather drain the treasury and head us towards a fiscal meltdown that cripples the federal government, than endanger the Pentagon or take away the upper income tax cuts. Besides, money needs to be shoveled out to Bush's political cronies and to the faith based organizations.

Look, from this point on, there should no longer be any talk from the GOP about the need for fiscal discipline. No more talk from Greenspan or anyone else about Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid spending needing to be cut. If you are not going to walk the talk, then shut the f*ck up.