Budgets are moral documents
The cartoon at the top has stayed with me since I first spotted it. “This is my list of things I don’t want others to have” describes in a dozen words the conservative governing philosophy in a way that might otherwise require a doctoral dissertation.
The entire Jim Crow era was based upon keeping black people from sharing in freedoms, privileges and power white people enjoy. New Jim Crow voting restrictions being passed today are based on it. Every time a conservative utters the phrases “real American” or “real America” they are making a claim to privileged status they believe is their birthright. Others equally American, at least in theory, must prove themselves worthy in a world where conservatives claim a veto over their advancement. Typically, whenever conservatives feel their social status threatened.
Republican budget priorities and fixation on tightening election rules reflect a narrow, exclusionary view of who counts as a citizen and who does not.
Catherine Rampell examines the new rule set House Republicans just passed and finds the same bias towards the right’s kind of people.
Spending programs benefitting the plebs must be paid for. Tax cuts for the wealty and corporations? Nope.
“Going forward, tax cuts do not need to be offset with any sort of savings elsewhere in the budget,” Rampell explains. “They can add trillions to the debt. No problem.”
The GOP has stacked the deck in favor of lowering taxes and against spending anything on those Others.
“There are a couple of big takeaways from these technicalities,” Rampell writes:
First is that, if you read between the lines, you’ll learn that even Republicans don’t believe their own long-standing promise that tax cuts will pay for themselves. After all, if the GOP genuinely believed this, they wouldn’t need to make it easier to pass tax cuts thatdon’t pay for themselves. Because such tax cuts … would not exist.
Second is who and what they care about.
“This is fundamentally about who pays for what, what are we investing in, and who’s left behind,” said Joel Friedman, a researcher for the Center on Budget Policies and Priorities. “It puts up barriers to the type of investments and public services that will help people through health care, education, supporting kids.”
As a result, we can expect more kids and poor families to face hardship, particularly if there is a downturn this year; and perhaps (even more) tax cuts for the rich.
[…]
Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what your priorities are, President Biden often says. Well, Republicans have shown us: a lower tax burden on the rich, less help forthe poor and the middle class.
More important than what Republicans want for Christmas is what they don’t want others to have.
For Democrats, e pluribus unum and “created equal” are more than pretty words.