A Little Perspective on the 2011 Budget

Posted by Michael Bryan

What the GOP is willing to shut the government down over is actually merely a symbolic amount of spending. The problem lies not in the cuts themselves (other than the distribution of the pain they will cause is unjustly slanted toward those who can least absorb the blow), but the policy riders they are insisting on including: stripping the EPA of jurisdiction over CO2, defunding planned parenthood and NPR, banning use of Federal funds for abortion in D.C., etc. Make no mistake, the threatened shut-down is not over the budget, it is about how much red meat GOP lawmakers are able to throw to base to whip them up over the "culture war" issues in 2012.