Budget Deal Grabs Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory

The proposed budget deal between the House, represented by Paul Ryan, and the Senate, represented by Patty Murray, once again proves that Democrats will, without fail, protect and preserve the prominence and power of the Republican Party. It was announced today that it is believed the Senate has the votes to pass this “deal.”

How many times can the Democratic Party “negotiate” deals that give them nothing in exchange for “saving” the Republican Party?

It is only possible to believe these bad deals keep getting made over and over again by “accident” for so long. At some point, even those who most dislike even a hint of conspiracy theory must admit that bad deal after bad deal is meant to, at a minimum, maintain the broken status quo. Which would make the Democrats as much the enemy of our economy as the Republicans?

All of this brings us to the current “budget deal.” A deal that increases military spending by $32 billion, doesn’t do anything for the long term unemployed, infrastructure repair, education, tax reform, etc. No. All it does is give the Republicans almost two years of “distance” between their shut-it-all-down, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, hostage taking antics of the past session of Congress. In short, this deal will allow REPUBLICANS to go back to their districts and say they “voted against government shutdowns” when that is NOT the case.

Senator Patty Murray (D-Boeing) either went along with this deal because she hopes some of the extra war billions will “trickle down” to her state of Washington or because having a split House and Senate is great for fundraising! Maybe both reasons led her to “negotiate” this horrible deal.

Details of the budget plan:

1. Lower cost-of-living adjustments for military retirees between the ages of 40 and 62. So a retiree at 40 will see smaller checks simply because they “may” go out and get another job. So the budget deal punishes our veterans. ?This is unfair and bad logic. The work status of a retired veteran is irrelevant. If a pension has been earned a full pension should be paid with appropriate cost of living increases. The message is clear: Give us your twenty years and then go get a job loser!
2. Civilian workers will contribute more to their pensions. Which, based on what they have just done to the military, leaves no guarantee that after paying into your pension that you will receive that pension.
3. Higher security fees for airline tickets. Now these fees aren’t to make airports safer or actually provide us any service. No, its a revenue generating device which makes it a back door tax and corrupts the truth by it’s very dishonesty.
4. Higher premiums for “pension insurance.” Let’s face facts: If you have a pension odds are good your company is going to loot those funds, crash your company and have the federal pension insurance fund pay you ten cents on the dollar if you are lucky. So, not only is your pension going to be stolen, you are now going to pay more for the crappy insurance that doesn’t even really cover your pension. Your money is simply being stolen.
5. They want to save $3 billion by not refilling the nation’s strategic reserve of petroleum? Right now, this very moment, the United States is the largest oil producing country in the world. Right now, this moment, we are the largest producer of gasoline in the world. IF there was ever going to be a good time to build up the strategic reserve wouldn’t it be, shouldn’t it be, while we have our own oil to do it?

This deal is bad for America. Yes it is good for defense contractors but it’s actually “bad” long-term for the pentagon. Right now private companies who contract their employees out to the DOD can charge up to seven hundred thousand dollars or more a year? for people that a generation ago would have been middle class civil service positions. There is reportedly a new “cap” coming online for some positions that will allow the contractors to only charge four hundred and fifty thousand per employee. I think a common sense argument could be made that before we keep shoveling more money to the Pentagon that we first make sure we need the more than five hundred overseas bases, and that those bases are staffed by government employees who will make less but do more work over a career than randomly hired Edward Snowden’s will. Bring service and tech jobs back into the pentagon and only use contractors for things that they should be doing. Guarding embassies? No. Doing background checks? No. Cooking food on military bases? No. The potential savings by having the military be self-sufficient would be in the billions of dollars. So, we could have the same bloated, world straddling empire we currently have but have it for less money and have it be more functional. ?But of course, this wasn’t even discussed. Instead, Murray and Ryan popped the champagne corks and promised themselves generous contributions from the “defense” industry.

Very little was discussed that would actually make our country better. ?Because, AS USUAL, the Democrats and Republicans are presenting the WRONG discussion based on false facts. Senator Murray and Representative Ryan were charged with deficit reduction, not with actually producing a working budget that would benefit the people they claim to represent. This country does not have a deficit problem. We have a problem with what we spend our deficit spending on. War? Bad investment. Public option? Good investment. The list of things that could and should be negotiated in a budget were ignored. Once again, old people and the disabled are being asked to pay for our national give-away program to the rich with not even the cynicism of being promised a “trickle down.” No, not even that. We are at the point where everyone, even the most conservative, realizes our national economic plan is a disaster but no party will take the lead and try to do the hard work of fixing thirty plus years of bad economic policy. This makes this budget simply another piece of theater for the television cameras. And yet one more example of Democrats clutching defeat from the jaws of victory! If there was EVER a time to simply get out of the way and let the Republican Party self-immolate THIS was the time!

Edited by DH