The GOP's Real Budget Hatchet Man

[n2doc]

— By Suzy Khimm

Wed May. 25, 2011 3:00 AM PDT
In the escalating fight over the budget and deficit in Washington, all eyes have been trained on GOP golden boy Rep. Paul Ryan. But though the Wisconsin Republican's controversial plan to gut Medicare has dominated the headlines, another House GOPer has been quietly doing the dirty work of making the budget cuts that actually have some chance of passing.

Two weeks ago, Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, made the GOP's next big move to slash spending for social programs. In a little-noticed proposal, Rogers detailed how the GOP wants to inflict the pain of more than $1 trillion in unspecified discretionary spending cuts contained in Ryan's 2012 budget, which passed the House in April. Rogers has now divided up the cuts into 12 different areas, each of which will be considered as its own spending bill. Under his proposal, the poor and the working class will be hardest-hit.

On Tuesday, Rogers kicked off the GOP's budget-cutting party in the House, deciding which programs should pay the price. Rogers has focused on capping labor, health, and education spending at $139 billion—$18 billion less than the 2011 budget and $41 billion below what President Obama proposed in his own 2012 budget. Big cuts to transportation and housing are another top priority for the GOP—which, per Rogers' proposal, wants to slash spending by $7.7 billion from the 2011 budget and $27 billion from the president's budget. By contrast, there's only one area where Republicans want to increase outlays: defense spending, where they propose a $17 billion hike in 2012.

Ironically enough, Rogers himself was once an infamous big spender. Dubbed the "Prince of Pork" by his Democratic opponents, the veteran Republican has secured so many earmarks for his home district that his hometown is known as "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood." But, along with the rest of the Republican leadership, Rogers has swiftly reinvented himself as a scalpel-wielding conservative in the face of the tea party-fueled pressure to reduce spending. His plan will now form the roadmap for where the Republicans stand on the big budget negotiations this summer—and his cuts are significantly likelier to be implemented than other aspects of the Ryan plan.

more
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/gop-budget-hatchet-man

[Wounded Bear]

1. K & R...We have to keep watch....

The Cantor flap starts to look like a D & P show while the real work to guy our country is going on behind the scenes. Hopefully the Dems are on watch for this crap.

[n2doc]

2. kick n/t