After Bush proposed a massive rebuilding of the gulf coast without raising taxes, Republicans began to wonder how to do it. Some rightly said that pork should be cut out of the budget; unfortunately, others decided this was another way to line the pockets of the rich at the expense of the poor. From Joel Achenbach:
So many politicians hide behind generalities or vague references to pork or waste or earmarks or whatnot. At least you know where some of these House Republicans stand. Which is: We should raise taxes on the poor.
That, at least, is one possible interpretation of the list they produced yesterday. In case you missed it, here are some of the items on their Whack List:
-Delay the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill for One year
-Increase Allowable Co-pays in Medicaid
-Block Grant Medicaid Acute Services
-Reduce Farm Payment Acreage by 1%
-Eliminate Subsidized Loans to Graduate Students
-Increase Medicare Part B Premium from 25% to 30%
-Level Funding for the Peace Corps
-Eliminate the Federal Anti-Drug Advertising
-Eliminate Federal Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
-Eliminate State Grants for Safe and Drug-Free Schools
-Eliminate the Even Start Program
-Eliminate Teen Funding Portion of Title X Family Planning
-Eliminate Funding for Penile Implants Under Medicare
That’s just a sample. Some of these items would save a lot of money, some would save very little. But there’s one item that the GOP believes would save $85 billion over 10 years:
“Verify Income of Earned Income Tax Credit Participants”
This appears to be a proposal to audit people who claim to be poor, to make sure they are truly poor and deserving of the tax credit. I’ll try to find out more to make sure I’m not missing some essential element of the idea. The GOP apparently believes that massive fraud exists in this program, and that we could ease the federal deficit by aggressively collecting taxes from the not-truly-poor — people who could be defined as the merely non-affluent, the not-doing-so-well, the just-scraping-by. But not “poor.” The GOP wants these posers to pay up. [And then the GOP will eliminate the Estate Tax, but that’s another matter entirely.]
He also delves into the $250 billion requested by Louisiana, which includes “$35 million to the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board for the rebuilding of lost markets that have been challenged by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.”
I need my staff to brief me on this so I can understand it better. Here’s a mysterious line that seems a little ominous:
“Allows president to waive or modify applicability of certain requirements under any law so that there is legal authority to continue to work without stopping work until it is cleared up or until Congress Acts to waive the requirement.” [This is probably known as the Godlike Power provision. You know that annoying Clean Water Act? Fuggedaboudit.]
I also need to be briefed on a fundamental question: How much is $250 billion? Like, in dollar bills stacked up toward the moon, sort of thing? Translated into cash handed to every man, woman and child? In B-1 Bombers? In nuclear submarines? If I’m a neo-con, I’m thinking that $250 billion would buy one heckava war to start a conflagration of democracy somewhere.
The thing about $250 billion is that it’s very, very close to that legendary unit of monetary measurement, the kajillion.
Fortunately our ace reporters translate the figure into something we can easily grasp:
“[T]he Louisiana delegation’s $250 billion bill would cost more than the Louisiana Purchase under the Jefferson administration on an inflation-adjusted basis.”
The human brain is not well designed to distinguish between millions and billions. In fact, any number larger than 12 is slightly befuddling to most of us. Above 12 is “many.” The government grasps this essential fact, and the best lobbyists and legislators know how to take an existing number and add a zero on the end without anyone hardly noticing. They’re incredibly skilled at saying, at a crucial moment, “Oh, million, billion, WHATEVER.”
