POLITICS - GOP Hypocrisy Seen From Michigan

"Congress goes home, leaves GOP deficit hypocrisy behind" by Ed Brayton, Michigan Messenger 7/1/2010

Both houses of Congress adjourned last night without passing an unemployment benefits extension of any kind, leaving for a week-long holiday with more than a million Americans having exhausted their benefits since they began arguing over the issue. While they’re home eating hamburgers and pressing the flesh, a couple hundred thousand more Americans will run out of benefits.

There are many ironies here, the most obvious of which is that the GOP insists on offsetting the cost of an extension of unemployment benefits with other cuts out of concern for the deficit — the cost is a tiny fraction of this year’s budget deficit — while simultaneously pushing for policies that will increase the deficit by far more both this year and in the future.

Here’s a chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that shows the primary inputs into the expected deficits for the next 10 years:

(chart moved to bottom)

You will notice that for 2010, the economic downturn is responsible for over $500 billion of the anticipated deficit, more than one-third of the total. The Bush tax cuts are responsible for another $300 billion or so. And the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, also with strong Republican support, are responsible for around $200 billion more.

And at the same time that the Republicans are demanding that the relatively tiny $34 billion cost of the unemployment benefits extension for jobless and struggling Americans be offset by budget cuts, they’re simultaneously demanding the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans — which will add trillions to the deficit over the next ten years and are responsible for more than 20 percent of the deficit this year.

Apparently deficit spending is only acceptable if it subsidizes the wealthy; if it benefits working class Americans, it’s an outrage and must be stopped.