Train Wreck

President Obama and congressional Democrats have acquiesced to all sorts of demands from House Republicans to cut spending, but Speaker John Boehner has kept moving the line in an attempt to placate the Tea Party. And the Tea Party's demands have gone beyond just cutting short-term spending on a few programs. Some zealots, like the horrible Representative Mike Pence (R-IN) has vowed to allow the government if there is no rider on the budget bill zeroing out Planned Parenthood funding to stop government funding of abortion - even though Planned Parenthood funding does not go to abortion procedures because Planned Parenthood deliberately keeps those services separate from birth control and gynecological exams.

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan continues to promote his Medicare "reform" plan and his budget proposals in general, insisting that the debt will be paid off by 2050, with government spending as 14 percent of the gross domestic spending by then and corporate tax rates reduced to 25 percent - all with 2.8 percent unemployment as early as 2017! No one believes any of this, least of all Ryan's employment projections, and what Ryan wants to accomplish is based on cuts affecting programs that benefit the middle and lower classes.

Oh yeah, that $4.4 trillion figure refers not to cuts over ten years - that number is $5.8 trillion - but to the tax cuts Ryan would preserve for the wealthy.

You know, I'm dizzy from following all of these numbers . . ..

Also: Senate Republicans successfully blocked efforts by the previous, Democratic-controlled Congress to pass a budget by refusing to go along with a budget that didn't have the spending cuts they wanted. When Harry Reid tried to compromise with them, they moved the line and forced the budget to be brought up by a new Republican House and a Senate with a larger Republican minority. That doesn't sound fair, but Republicans were never about fairness. :-0