The Progress Report

The battle over the 2011 federal budget has degenerated into a game in which Republicans move the parameters of negotiations in order to slash ever deeper into programs which aid middle-class Americans and others in need, while also targeting measures that support the economic recovery. So far, a series of continuing resolutions have provided temporary stop-gap funding, thus warding off a shutdown, but that option appears spent. On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said, “Time is up here,” and that he would not support “a short-term CR without a long-term commitment.” The question of budget riders is also coming to a head, with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) flatly refusing to allow Republican provisions that would defund health care reform and Planned Parenthood, among other programs. Meanwhile, Democrats offer increasing capitulations on the budget number, chasing the tail of Republican demands. The outlines of a possible deal have emerged, but if that falls through, then the threat of a government shutdown is waiting in the wings. Perhaps summing up the sentiments best, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) reassured nervous Republicans by bluntly asserting that, if they hold the line, “We’re gonna kick their ass.”

UNPOPULIST REVOLT: The strange saga of the 2011 budget began with a February proposal by the House Republicans to cut $32 billion relative to current spending levels. This fell short of the cuts originally demanded by the incoming freshman Tea Partiers, but at the time, even the Republican leadership did not have the stomach for such extreme reductions. Tea Party congressmen, apparently unfazed by whatever concerns were holding back their leadership, forced the Republicans to pass a budget, H.R. 1, a budget with $57 billion in cuts. In fact, the Tea Party stance has become so unforgiving that a strange good-cop-bad-cop split has emerged in which Eric Cantor has begun parroting the Tea Party line while John Boehner has presented the face of negotiation, attempting to work around the extremists in his own party. As for the Democrats, they understandably balked at the $57 billion figure, and along with the White House, have floated a compromise offer of approximately $30 billion in further cuts. But this does not appear sufficient to satisfy the Republicans’ far right. Nor has the Democrats’ proposal to expand the cuts beyond non-defense discretionary spending made much headway. One top Republican aide went so far as to state, “This debate has always been about discretionary spending — not autopilot ‘mandatory’ spending or tax hikes.”

BLEEDING THE MOST VULNERABLE: Republicans are singling out non-defense discretionary spending, which provides the most support to the middle-class. The cuts in the H.R. 1 slash funding for transportation infrastructure, workplace safety, regulation of commodity and energy speculation, and inspections for food, drugs, and consumer products. They also bite deeply into security for railroads, ports, subways and air travel, cut $1.3 billion from local law enforcement, reduce funds for drinking-water infrastructure, threaten to deny 9.4 million individuals Pell grants, and even cut the budget for programs to counter the international proliferation of nuclear weapons. As for the poor, a recent report by the poverty reduction campaign Half In Ten found within H.R. 1 a laundry list of assaults on our society’s most vulnerable members. They include: denying 10,000 low-income veterans housing vouchers and cutting off 218,000 low-income children from early learning opportunities provided by Head Start. Job training and other employment services for 8 million people are also eliminated, as are hundreds of millions of dollars for assistance to dislocated workers, career pathway grants for community colleges, low-income community development, FEMA’s emergency food and shelter funds, community health centers, prenatal and postnatal care for low-income women, and preventative health care for low-income families. And all this while corporate profits are near record highs, the richest fifth of Americans lay claim to half the nation’s income, and unemployment remains at 9 percent. In fact, Half In Ten’s report concluded the GOP‘s cuts could push the unemployment rate back up to 10 percent, Goldman Sachs economists predicted a 1.5 to 2 percentage point drop in economic growth, and Moody’s Mark Zandi predicted 400,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2011 if cuts were enacted.

THE AGONY AND THE IRONY: As of this writing, hints have emerged that negotiations between Republicans and Democrats may have reopened over the $30 billion figure, placing the budget right back where the Republicans had originally proposed. But even $30 billion in cuts would still deal a severe blow to the American economy, the middle-class and millions of the country’s least fortunate citizens — all while leaving intact enormously expensive tax cuts for the wealthy and tax expenditures which have allowed major American corporations to get away with paying to taxes at all. As such, even this “relatively” mild outcome would hurt too many Americans. A sound alternative put forward by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), which would have attempted to reset the budget debates for 2011, 2012 and beyond by opening up other spending cuts and revenue increases as options, has been left on the cutting room floor. And in a bitter irony, the Democrats’ willingness to bend over backwards has thoroughly put the lie to what has been one of the Republicans’ main talking points: that if a shutdown does occur, it will be due to the Democrats’ intransigence.