Mis-Timed Priorities

Yesterday Ensign Ed lamented the House GOP's enthusiastic "bipartisanship" on the latest farm subsidy bill:

Politico offers Republicans six ways that they can save the GOP, but yesterday provided them at least one concrete opportunity that they squandered. The House passed the latest farm bill with a veto-proof majority, bloating the budget with subsidies during a period where crops receive record prices. Instead of trimming fat from the budget, House Republicans joined Democrats in feeding special interests:

The House yesterday passed a final version of a new five-year farm bill by a vote of 318 to 106, a margin large enough to override President Bush’s promised veto of the nearly $300 billion measure.

The bipartisan show of support came after intense lobbying by a coalition that included farm groups, anti-hunger advocates, environmental organizations and the biofuels industry. While continuing traditional farm subsidy programs, the bill increases spending on nutrition programs such as food stamps by $10.4 billion.

Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer released a statement saying the vote “sends the wrong message to the rest of the country who are not experiencing the boom of the agriculture sector,” and, “This bill is loaded with taxpayer funded pet projects at a time when Americans are struggling to buy groceries and afford gas to get to work.”

Rest assured I agree that Republican complicity in pre-emptively overriding a Bush veto of this mess is highly unfortunate.  It's also less than a newsflash.  I seem to recall just a couple of years ago - or was it three? - when the GOP-controlled Congress passed a very similarly bloated, pork-laden transportation bill, also by veto-proof margins.  I also remember Bush not vetoing that bill, which raises the question of if he'll bother to do so now.

The reality has ALWAYS been that pork is bipartisan.  That 'Pubbies had a taste for it didn't suddenly arise in the last Congress; that can be traced all the way back to the end of the first-hundred-day Contract With America period in the spring of 1995.  Only difference between the two was the price tag.

Well, that and the fact that, as Ed notes and as I see every day in my day job, agricultural commodity prices have exploded over the past couple of years.  If ever there was a time when farming interests did NOT need price supports, it's now.  Add in the perennial energy chimera of corn-fed ethanol (which gooses up the price of high-fructose corn syrup that goes into everything from soda pop to hamburger buns) and you get an equation that is absolutely ass-backwards.  We're pouring fiscal napalm on an inflationary blaze, distorting markets, contributing to hunger all over the world - for no other discernable purpose than mindless "process" and long-established corruption.

My only point of departure from the Ensign's observations is his defense of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which originated farm subsidies.  I think FDR knew exactly what he was doing, that these programs would NEVER go away, and always meant for them to become corporate welfare giveaways that would ensnare Big Business and the GOP right along with it into having a vested interest in maintaining the statist status quo.  The last fourteen years is living proof of it.

Still, that is not to say that even today's sadsack Pachyderms have completely lost their fiscal responsibility instincts.  Unfortunately, their choice of when to exercise them left a great deal to be desired:

President Bush's Iraq war funding request collapsed in the House Thursday as anti-war Democrats and Republicans unhappy about added domestic funding combined to kill — for now — $163 billion to support U.S. troops overseas.

The unlikely coalition formed when Republicans expected to provide the winning margin for the Iraq and Afghanistan funding instead sat out the vote in protest.

The GOP revolt was a response to Democratic strong-arm tactics in advancing the must-pass measure, as well as their efforts to add money for the unemployed and an expansion of GI education benefits.

The defeat of the Iraq funding measure came on a 149-141 tally. Nearly two-thirds of the House's Democrats voted against continuing to fund the war as 132 Republicans sat out the vote in protest.

Democrats then forced through a nonbinding plan seeking an exit from Iraq by December of next year. The 224-196 vote on the measure broke mostly along party lines.

Yeah, the Dems attaching a poison pill was bush-league.  But is there anything that can be more expected than that?  Hell, "Christmas-tree-ing" must-pass legislation is Appropriations 101.  Was under the GOP as well as the Donks.  Why would this bill have been any different?

More pointedly, why did Republicans make such a stink about the majority's cynical profligacy here but not on the farm subsidies bill?  Sure, that latter would have passed anyway, but the point would have been much better made.  Here all that was accomplished was precisely what Crazy Nancy's caucus wanted: the defunding of the troops and the passage of another "RETREEEEEAAAAT!" resolution.

Even the alleged stand for fiscal restraint was substantially diluted:

Thirty-two Republicans joined Democrats on a 256-166 vote to sharply boost education benefits for Iraq-Afghanistan veterans under the GI Bill — despite an accompanying tax surcharge on the wealthy and small businesses — and voted to provide a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits.

Soooo, a sixth of the GOP caucus didn't just go along with the wasteful spending, but a classist tax grab to "pay" for it as well.  Yep, THAT's playing to the base, huh?

As you may have anticipated, their Senate counterparts are no better: 

Conservatives (?) Larry ["Wide Stance"] Craig, R-ID and Richard Shelby, R-AL, for example, sent out numerous news releases crowing about domestic add-ons such as $450 million to combat Western wildfires and $75 million to help commercial fishermen in a substantially more expensive Senate companion measure that cleared the Appropriations panel Thursday afternoon.

Do I really need to say any more?  Besides, Crazy Nancy's statement summed it up succinctly:

"With today's vote, the Republicans have shown that they are confused and are in disarray.  House Republicans refused to pay for a war they support, and by voting against the GI bill, they refused to support our veterans when they come home."

Ed is spot-on when he writes:

Republicans took control of Congress in 1994 by promising to revamp government and reduce it at the federal level, allowing for lower taxes, lower costs, and sensible policies. If they want to rebuild their credibility, they have to differentiate themselves by not just ending their own habits of feeding at special-interest troughs, but eliminating the troughs altogether.

That raises the question of whether they want that credibility back, or have instead rediscovered their fondness for languishing in the minority, where they don't have to engage in political mortal combat on a daily basis, and can lead quiet lives of golf, accepting whatever pork scraps the ruling Donks condescend to give them, and otherwise staying out of harm's way.

There was a reason the GOP spent forty years out of power in the House of Representatives.  If current trends are any indication, this sojourn may make that one look like a brief intermission.