Issa abandoning commitment to jobs?
~ Jason Chaffetz, Oversight Subcommittee Chair and favorite of both Darrell Issa and Glenn Beck, was floated in a recent poll as a potential primary challenger to six-term Senator Orrin Hatch, and came out tied at 42% Chaffetz will certainly get all the spotlight he wants with Issa's help.
~ Last week, Issa confidently predicted that there would be no government shutdown. He then was extremely active in loading up the House budget proposal with narrow, line-item cuts targeting things like condoms, yoga, video games, malt liquor, and menopause to begin the process of dismantling health care and other reforms passed in recent years. Today, Jon Berstein explains why it's specifically those sorts of add-ons that make a government shutdown likely.
~ Speaking of those exceptionally small-scale and rather silly proposed cuts, Issa tried defending them with Norah O'Donnell last week. He managed to unexpectedly hit on an important point when he told O'Donnell: "in those 12 years we’ve gone from having a budget surplus to a deficit. So everything that’s been added should be the first to be looked at."
As Ben Armbruster notes at ThinkProgress, in terms of major budget impact, that discussion would naturally begin with Afghanistan and repealing the Bush tax breaks. One might also add the steady de-regulation of the private financial sector that led to economic collapse late in the Bush administration. But it's hard to imagine that Issa will actually act on his statements.
~ An independent analysis of the proposal from House Republicans found that it could reduce U.S. economic growth by 1.5 to 2 percent. It follows a study finding the proposed spending cuts could deliver a million lost jobs. John Boehner says "so be it" about the job losses, but it flies even more blatantly in the face of Issa's pursuit of "job-killing" government actions.
2 comments
posted by Lucas O’Connor at 3:33 pm