Eugene Robinson:In the GOP's budget, a surplus of spite

[cal04]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/24/AR2011012405023.html?nav=hcmoduletmv

(snip)
The conservatives want to end funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Legal Services Corporation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Energy Star program, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change . . . you get the picture. Put together, these expenditures would not begin to pay for, say, the $13 billion Marine Corps landing craft that Gates plans to kill because we are no longer fighting World War II.

You'd think that Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, would have applauded Gates's frugality. Instead, he described himself as "not happy" and vowed he will "not stand idly by and watch the White House gut defense when Americans are deployed in harm's way."

In other words, it's perfectly fine to waste money on defense. What's not acceptable to GOP conservatives, apparently, is spending on agencies or programs that they oppose philosophically. Don't believe in climate change, despite wide scientific consensus that it's real? Just cut off funding for the U.N. panel that disagrees with your view.

It seems to have dawned on Cantor that this position is fundamentally untenable and politically unwise. He has his work cut out for him if much of the GOP caucus sees the budget as an expression not of policy but of vengeance and spite.

[bobburgster]

1. Boy, some things never change! n/t

[DCBob]

2. This is why I am a Democrat..

The GOPers want to cut things that help build and improve our society at the expense of things that cause destruction. Fools.

[Myrina]

3. GOP: "us hate reading. us hate arts. us like make things go boom."

:spank: Oy. :spank: