Hawkish hobgoblins and corporate whores
by digby
It looks like the deficit hawks and the defense hawks have no problem reconciling their foolish inconsistencies:
If you dropped in from outer space to watch the House Armed Services Committee debate the latest defense spending bill on Wednesday morning, you could be excused for not realizing that this country is facing a budget crisis.
The United States is expected to hit its debt ceiling this month, and some leaders in Congress are refusing to lift it on the grounds that the federal government spends too much and is growing too big.
As House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon has complained: “Democrats simply do not care how large the deficit grows.”
But somehow, that issue just isn’t coming up among McKeon and his usual “deficit hawk” supporters when it comes to defense spending. One representative after another argues for this or that fighter jet engine or firing range or other pet project that the U.S. military has said it doesn’t need, while looming over the entire budgeting process is the whopping amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, proposed by McKeon, that includes a new and expanded declaration of war.
The government doesn’t need that, either.
The United States has already spent more than $1.283 trillion on military operations since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to the Congressional Research Service. With the orchestrator of the attacks dead and a federal shutdown looming if Congress can’t get a new budget in order, it seems an odd time to be expanding the “war on terror” beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, to reach potentially anywhere in the world that the President decides it should. Yet that’s exactly what McKeon’s “Detainee Security Act” (now incorporated into the NDAA) would do.
Remember, to this particular hawk species “deficits” mean government spending on things they don’t like. It’s always fine as long as it’s to give payoffs to the rich and kill foreigners.
By the way, it isn’t just Republicans. Get a load of this, (via Susie at C&L):
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), facing reelection next year, spoke up to oppose a plan being drafted by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad that would impose a new surtax on millionaires of about three percent on top of the higher tax rates they would face when the George W. Bush tax cuts expire next year, according to several people familiar with the exchange.
Nelson later explained through a spokesman that he was opposed to “double taxation,” even on the wealthy.
Another centrist on the budget committee, Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), has also opposed the idea.
Several centrist Democrats have been voicing concern in private sessions that Conrad’s draft may be shifting too far to the left in order to placate liberals on the committee whose votes are needed to move the legislation, according to aides.
You’ve got the Republicans threatening to blow up the country if they aren’t allowed to have every last item on their wishlist and these “centrists” can’t even let the Democrats bluff that they will ask for more than the extension of the Bush tax cuts? They’re not even trying to hide their subservience to their wealthy masters, are they?
They’d rather be seen as sycophantic corporate whores than have even one person get the idea that the Democrats might have a liberal base it needs to placate just as the Republicans have the Tea Party. That would be unseemly and embarrassing. And extremely unserious. Plus, it might mean the Democrats have to actually negotiate instead of simply delivering outright for their donors, which seems to be a requirement if they are to get a piece of those billions in profits that are gushing into the political system. Hippie punching for dollars is part of the deal.
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