NYT editorial: Parrying the Big Cuts

After months in a defensive crouch, Democrats are arising to challenge the severe budget cuts planned by House Republicans, which would almost certainly make unemployment worse. And it is not a moment too soon because when the stopgap resolution that is financing the government expires on March 4, the House will have significant leverage to get its way. Without a new spending bill, the government will shut down — a prospect that seems to delight many newly elected Republicans.

A few days ago, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee began running radio ads criticizing members of the Republican Study Committee, a group of House members that wants to cut $2.5 trillion out of the budget in the next decade, including $100 million from now through September. In case voters don’t know what the actual impact of these drastic reductions would be, the ads are there to remind them:

“Congresswoman Ann Marie Buerkle supports a plan in Congress that would cut education by 40 percent,” said one of the ads, directed against a newly elected Republican from upstate New York. “And her plan would cut science and technology research by 40 percent, too. Research and development is how we get the new products that create new jobs. How does cutting that help us compete with China and India? It doesn’t make sense.” Ms. Buerkle, like other subjects of ads, represents a district won by President Obama in 2008.

The ads seem to be having some effect. Robert Hurt, a Republican freshman from Virginia featured in one, protested that he didn’t necessarily support all the cuts proposed by the committee, which is made up of some of the most conservative House members, even though he joined up immediately after being elected.

(More here.)