Republican leaders are once again resorting to fear-mongering and empty rhetoric in an effort to block Barack Obama's budget proposals, Earl Ofari Hutchinson writes at his blog. He examines the GOP's relentless budget sparring matches with the president.
GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell is nothing if not persistent. And it's always the same issue with the same motive. The issue is the budget. And to hear McConnell and the GOP leaders tell it, President Obama's alleged penchant for squandering tens of billions on wasteful, non-productive spending programs. McConnell even tossed in the GOP' favorite slur of Democrats when he lambasted Obama's budget proposals as "extra goodies for tax-and-spend liberals".
The added twist this time around is the GOP has stood Obama's emphasis on middle-class job creation on its head and claims that the Obama's budget proposals do absolutely nothing to create jobs and economic improvement for the middle-class. The motive is to tar Obama and the Democrats as big government, serial splurgers. The GOP peddles this line again to knock down any talk of a "grand bargain," a combination of tax increases on the wealthy in exchange for more and deeper spending cuts.
This is more GOP doggerel. Obama in prior budget proposals offered cuts to community service block grants which fund an array of community education, health and social service programs in poor, underserved, largely inner-city neighborhoods, cut programs in science, technology, youth mentoring programs, and employment and training assistance, and even tweak the GOP's prime slash and burn targets, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The cuts to Medicare and Medicaid would be stretched out over a decade, and there will be no major structural reforms in the program which is what the GOP demands and which is wildly at odds with the majority of Americans, especially those who are dependent for their health coverage on the programs. But Obama still put the Medicare restructure proposals on the budget table and they have remained there.
Read Earl Ofari Hutchinson's complete piece at the Hutchinson Report News.
The Root aims to foster and advance conversations about issues relevant to the black Diaspora by presenting a variety of opinions from all perspectives, whether or not those opinions are shared by our editorial staff.