Forget about the social inequities of the Republican budget plan ... how in typical Republican fashion it takes from the poor and the worker, and this time even the elderly, and gives to the rich ... what I find mind-boggling is the House passage of their budget blueprint with no committee hearings and virtually no debate.
This is one of the most important legislative documents in many years. In its details it will go nowhere. But in the scope of its bottom line insistence on restoring the country to fiscal sanity and soundness, it most definitely sets the target for deficit reduction that any other plan will be held up to. No wimpish effort will be acceptable.
Without the Republican's throwing down the gauntlet, it's quite possible that no political force would have risen to tackle this most serious national problem. Certainly President Obama was not forthcoming on the issue when he prepared his 2012 budget, being more concerned with his re-election campaign. As I said in a previous post, his lack of leadership on this issue has been very disappointing.
But now that the Republicans have given him political cover, he has come up with his own plan, which it's reported borrows heavily from the recommendations of the bipartisan commission he appointed on cutting the deficit. Members of the Senate are reportedly also busy devising their own plan.
Commendable as their effort may thus be from this perspective, the process they have followed makes a mockery of considered government. The Republicans of 2011 are no different than the Gingrich Republicans of 1995 ... they are consumed by a hubris that will result in their graceless defeat at the hands of the very voters that lifted them to power. In that respect, I am grateful for their hubris.
