An unexpected consequence of DeLay's indictment is that the Republican Study Committee may now barrel on ahead, unobstructed (via Dispatches from the Trenches), with its plans to use Katrina "relief" and "reconstruction" as opportunities to finish shredding the safety net.
House Republican leaders have moved from balking at big cuts in Medicaid and other programs to embracing them, driven by pent-up anger from fiscal conservatives concerned about runaway spending and the leadership’s own weakening hold on power.
Beginning this week, the House GOP lawmakers will take steps to cut as much as $50 billion from the fiscal 2006 budget for health care for the poor, food stamps and farm supports, as well as considering across-the-board cuts in other programs. Only last month, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) and other GOP leaders quashed demands within their party for budget cuts to pay for the soaring cost of hurricane relief.
DeLay told a packed room of reporters on Sept. 13 that 11 years of Republican rule had already pared down the federal budget “pretty good.” If lawmakers had suggestions for cuts, DeLay said he would listen, but he was not offering anything up.
But faced with a revolt among many conservatives sharply critical of him for resisting spending cuts, DeLay three weeks later told a closed meeting of the House Republican Conference, “I failed you,” according to a number of House members and GOP aides. Then, in a nod to the most hard-core conservatives, DeLay volunteered, “You guys filled a void in the leadership.”
The abrupt shift reflects a changed political dynamic in the House in which a faction of fiscal conservatives — known as the Republican Study Committee, or RSC — has gained the upper hand because of DeLay’s criminal indictment in Texas, widespread criticism of the Republicans’ handling of Hurricane Katrina, and uncertainty over the future of the leadership, according to lawmakers and aides.
Now, cutting the budget — which only months ago seemed far from possible — is at the center of the agenda in the House. “No one wants to have an argument with friends, but that argument facilitated the debate that led to the package [of cuts] that [House Speaker J. Dennis] Hastert has now put out there,” said Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.), chairman of the RSC and a leading proponent of cuts to offset new government spending. (emphasis added)
The bitter irony, of course, is that it looks like we are getting the exact opposite of the now fleeting hope that Katrina would force issues of race and poverty back onto the front burner of national policy. While the hateful and opportunistic Republicans deserve nothing but contempt, I am more angry with Democrats and so-called progressives. Chris Kromm sums up the failure of the left quite succinctly:
Katrina put issues of race and class on the national radar in a way that won't be repeated for a very long time. But the opportunity to discuss and act on these issues -- progressive issues -- is being largely squandered.
Let's be clear: If progressives fail to seize this opportunity, what will suffer are not only the people of the Gulf Coast, now at the mercy of real estate speculators, energy developers, far-right ideologues, and other nefarious interests. We will also lose a once-in-a-decade chance to resurrect the progressive agenda on a national scale.
This is our moment. Endlessly speculating about DeLay's indictments or the Plame investigation may be fun. But the Gulf debacle is something progressives can do something about, now, that has the potential to permanently shift the debate about fundamental inequalities in our society.
Progressives need to step up to the plate, and 1) support the fight for a democratic, just and sustainable rebuilding in the Gulf, and 2) work tirelessly and with laser focus to return issues of poverty and inequality to the top of the national agenda.
The thousand people who died and hundreds of thousands who have suffered in Katrina's wake deserve nothing less.
Though I have not ever really considered myself a Democrat, I have continued to register as a Democrat year after year, out of habit, if for no other reason than to vote in the primaries. I don't know if I will be able to stomach it the next time around.
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