An Old Day Is Dawning-- And Night Should Look Like Hell If Miss McConnell Is Giving Us The Straight Dope

In 2008 Obama was elected President and Miss McConnell was reelected to the U.S. Senate (from Kentucky, a state with one of the highest income disparities between the rich and everyone else while also one of the states receiving the most federal spending per dollar of federal taxes paid). In Kentucky, McConnell beat a corrupt, conservative Democrat, Bruce Lunsford, 953,816 (53%) to 847,005 (47%). McCain beat President Obama in Kentucky, where racism and bigotry are as rampant as ignorance and poor dental hygiene, 1,048,462 (58%) to 751,985 (41%). Nationally, of course, Miss McConnell only got that same 953,816 votes. President Obama (who, like Miss, won with 53%) took over 66 million votes from Americans who don't live in Kentucky. His margin over McCain was resounding-- 66,882,230 to 58,343,671.

But that didn't stop Miss at a Saturday night fundraiser for wealthy Republicans from puffing himself up to declare "an end to the Obama agenda."

"We have 47 in the Senate, and for some of you who are disappointed in that, it takes 60 votes to control the Senate," said McConnell. "The legislative agenda of Barack Obama is over." 

Despite McConnell's declaration, though, the Republican said members of his party remain ready to work with the president, noting Obama's rhetorical nod toward centrism since his party's defeat in November. 

McConnell said Obama has been doing "Clintonian back flips" since Republicans made big midterm gains. 

He said, "to the extent that the president wants to do what we think is right for America, we won't say 'no' simply because there's an election coming along."

How Christian of him... if it were even true-- which it isn't. Jonathan Cohn wrote last week about the tender mercies of Miss McConnell, Boehner and their congressional cronies. Bye Bye, Big Bird. Hello, E. Coli. "Financial aid for college will decline," he wrote, "food-borne illness will spread more easily, Head Start programs will shrink, and Big Bird might be out of business if House Republicans get their way." That's the agenda Miss and the Republicans want to replace Obama's with: a dystopian, Randian nightmare that's good for everyone making in the million dollar range and absolutely awesome if you're one of the Koch Brothers. For everyone else; pray the American people wake up by November, 2012-- and that Obama doesn't buckle completely. Is this the kind of America you're looking for?

After a difficult week of negotiations, the House Appropriations Committee on Friday evening released a detailed list of spending cuts that would reduce non-defense federal expenditures by about $60 billion between now and September, when the fiscal year ends.

In so doing, House leadership addressed the concerns of Tea Party activists and newly elected Republicans, who were angry that previous spending plans didn't shrink the size of government sufficiently. But that is an awful lot of money to take out of the budget in such a short time, particularly if none of it can come from either the Pentagon or the large entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) that comprise the majority of federal spending. 

A Democratic source has passed along a non-partisan analysis that shows, in detail, what those cuts would mean. Although I have no precise, line-by-line corroboration of the analysis, sources I consulted told me the predictions sound about right. The analysis is also consistent with a paper that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued last week, based on preliminary reports of the full Republican spending plan. 

According to the analysis I’ve seen, these are among the cuts:

About 8 million college students would see their Pell Grants fall by about 15 percent, with the maximum grants of $5,550 declining by $845. “Our students count on that money, and we don’t have the resources to try to make that up,” one college financial aid officer told the New York Times in December, in response to talk such a cut might be coming.

Head Start funding would fall by more than $1 billion, forcing some combination of lower spending per child and fewer children in the program. The analysis I saw predicted more than 200,000 low-income children would lose slots in the program, although some of that may reflect the loss of funding from the expiring Recovery Act. Either way, it's a pretty big hit. Oh, and about 55,000 instructors and teachers could lose jobs as part of the cut.

In absolute terms, the cut to the USDA's food inspection program may seem a lot smaller--just $100 million. But that will almost certainly mean fewer inspectors, which is no small thing. As the non-partisan organization OMB Watch has noted, in recent years the number of inspectors has not kept up with the number of food producers--and "at no other regulatory agency does the size of the inspectorate need to be so closely aligned to the size of the industry it regulates." 

Title I grants, which help schools with particularly needy populations, would fall by $700 million, affecting 2,400 schools and one million children. Another 10,000 instructors and aides would likely lose their jobs, as well. This is a direct hit on low-income children and the communities in which they live.

Americorps? The House Republicans would wipe out its funding entirely. And the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? Same thing.

Hal Rogers, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, says that he and his colleagues "weeded out excessive, unnecessary, and wasteful spending, making tough choices to prioritize programs based on their effectiveness and benefit to the American people." And it's true that some of these programs could genuinely use some reform. USDA has had management problems, for example, while Head Start's effect on long-term academic performance is questionable.

Even so, there is no question these cuts will have a huge and devastating impact on public services. (The best available evidence on Head Start suggests the program still has at least some positive impact, while providing affordable, quality day care to families that desperately need it.) Besides, it's not as if the Republicans are proposing to replace these programs with more efficient alternatives. Overall, according to the Times, these proposals "represent one of the largest efforts to reverse the outflow of federal dollars in modern times."