Budget: Fear Politics

After four days and four nights of debating, which often resembled a vast disaster, Republicans of the House of Representatives (apart from three members of the GOP who insisted on more important cuts) voted in favor of a budget that would lead to $60 billion in cuts — more than the $50 billion proposal of the old fashioned Republicans, and clearly less than the $100 billion promised by members of the tea party movement (a figure released just because it sounded good).

This budget has little chance of being passed. First, because the Senate, still controlled by Democrats, will not vote for such a budget; and second, because Barack Obama has let it be known since the beginning of the process that he would refuse a budget proposing cuts to programs that are essential to the most modest Americans.

Congress is on vacation until Tuesday morning, due to Presidents Day. This leaves four days to find a compromise with which the government is still able to function. After March 4, if the budget is not approved, the government will no longer have the means to pay its workers or soldiers, and retirees will not receive their Social Security checks. This always has a bad effect when it comes to voters. It already happened in 1995, when Bill Clinton overcame Newt Gingrich and the Republicans, whom voters held responsible for the closure of their government. This government closure had assured the re-election of Bill Clinton.

In the last few days, the euphoric atmosphere of the House has fallen, and the amendments to reduce the deficit have flowed. A group of Republicans even proposed $22 billion in supplementary cuts. Republican leadership had to join with the Democrats in order to block this amendment. Among the victims of budget reductions: the new engine of the F-35 fighter plane and Planned Parenthood, which would no longer receive government funds. The suppression of funds for Planned Parenthood is a disguised method of limiting or even banning abortion.

The budget reduction debate will be one of the principle themes of the presidential campaign to come: on one side, Obama and the Democrats, arguing that cuts that are too big will sever the arms of the economic reform; on the other, the Republicans, for whom the State must remove funding from all its sectors where it is not needed.

The White House and the Senate Democratic majority are not opposing a budget reduction, but this reduction should not be created blindly, randomly, just to arrive at a figure that sounds good. For now, Republicans have been grabbing in a frenzy, resembling sharks that have sniffed a hint of blood. But it could well cost them dearly at the next election, for example, in galvanizing Barack Obama’s electorate, which has a tendency to be less mobilized.