US budget: The shrinking of our society

Without presenting an alternative of fair taxes, Democrats are playing into the Tea Party agenda

Michael Tomasky
guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 5 April 2011

Back during the Vietnam war an antiwar senator is reputed to have said that the United States should just declare victory and go home. I've been reminded of this story watching the Tea Party element in Congress these last few days, because on the cusp of a more than respectable first-round victory, they're trying to declare defeat.

To get you quickly up to speed, the deadline for a budget agreement looms on Friday. Congress has already passed two stopgap spending bills to keep the government functioning – for three weeks, then two. Republicans say there'll be no more of those. Either there's a real deal or no deal. So, if there's no deal by Friday, all "non-essential" government operations will shut down. The museums of Washington will be closed on Saturday, for starters. On Monday, hundreds of thousands of federal workers will stay at home, without pay, and thousands of government functions from scientific research to community development, farming support and environmental protection will cease to be funded and carried out.

Republicans and Democrats agreed in principle last week to $33bn in domestic spending cuts and have been negotiating toward that goal, which splits the difference between the parties' starting points. But to the Tea Party-backed members of the Republican caucus, splitting the difference constitutes compromising with the socialists.

On Monday night, after meeting the caucus, House speaker John Boehner suddenly announced "$33bn is not enough". The figure would make for the largest single-year cut in what we call the domestic discretionary budget – that is, the social spending at the heart of our most heated debates – in modern history.

(More here.)