Paul Ryan: April's Fool
Paul Ryan has produced yet another budget
plan, this one supposedly will balance the federal budget by 2024.
The budget, says Ryan, is “consistent with America’s
military goals and strategies”.
Who’s to say that even if he has somehow been able to place
the stylus at the right spot in the groove, that a new administration won’t
change records once elected?
For this budget to make any sense, however, it relies on
repealing the ACA. Cheese and rice, Ryan, don’t you understand that the ACA is
here to stay? Can’t you wrap your mind around the fact that you and your
republican blinder-wearers have lost this battle? Forty, maybe 50 votes that
failed to repeal the act and you still seem to think it could happen?
Hell, there are countless ways any of us would like to turn
back time, as Ryan is trying here. Personally, I regret that first cashew I had.
Things have never been the same.
This is something I think is the as yet unspoken desire – to
undo what some would call progress, like unemployment compensation, or even job
creation mature enough to actually create jobs. I mean in this country.
I guess it could happen. Right after Ayn Rand rises from the
dead and becomes his running mate.
The budget does provide for increased military spending,
there’s no surprise there, considering that this generation of republicans seem
only interested in going to war, and staying there. Care to place any bets on
whether there’s increased funding for veteran’s benefits?
There are some things, according to the New York Times
article, that I can live without: subsidies for the National Endowment for the
Arts, and the Corporation for Public Bradcasting. I’m not thrilled about it,
but I can deal with it. But not eliminating funding for the Clean Technology
and Strategic Climate Fund.
Ryan says of the latter that it is “not a core U.S. foreign policy
function”. Neither is corporate welfare subsidies, and I say if we have yet
even more money for that, we can spend some money on clean air and water.
This is how we live now because of the tantrums thrown by
this generation of republicans. Remember how, even with their different
philosophies, there was always a core set of pols from either party who would,
after a spate of jockeying, would sit down like adults, accept that you can’t
always have everything exactly your own way and that you might have to live
with a compromise, and actually do the people’s work?
But none of any of this matters one bit, as this last
incarnation isn’t really a serious budget plan, it’s more like making a wild
bluff at the start of a poker game, it’s meant only to throw your opponents off
their square, to place them en prise.
