I've given up hope for Republicans to come to the table and honestly help broker a package that can put America back to work. I've also been wary of conservative Democrats around this whole thing too, but now it seems a few of them really don't care much either. Take for instance Senator Bayh, who was too busy to go to a meeting he said included important discussions on the bill. And then you have people like Senator Ben Nelson, who defines the term "DINO."
From Greg Sargent:
Total Reductions: $80 billion
Eliminations:
Head Start, Education for the Disadvantaged, School improvement, Child Nutrition, Firefighters, Transportation Security Administration, Coast Guard, Prisons, COPS Hiring, Violence Against Women, NASA, NSF, Western Area Power Administration, CDC, Food Stamps
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Reductions:
Public Transit $3.4 billion, School Construction $60 billion
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Increases:
Defense operations and procurement, STAG Grants, Brownfields, Additional transportation funding
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Nelson spokesperson Clay Westrope confirms the authenticity of the memo, adding that the figures obviously could change. But this is currently the general direction.
Instead of working with his party, he opts to go the "bipartisan" route, meaning that women, children, firefighters, mass transit and the poor will suffer at the behest of the Defense industry. Sounds like more of the same from the last eight years to me. The last thing we need is to make the Defense industry any more bloated than it already is. In fact, if our government really wanted to solve problems here at home, they would start cutting that $527 billion dollar budget (not including war expenses) and give it to programs that help the people.
Shame on Nelson for supporting tripe like this.
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