Republicans: The Party of Shortsighted Inhumane Monsters

"White House Budget chief Peter Orszag said in an AP interview 'With appropriate attention and proper management, you can both get the money out the door ... and still have well-selected projects."

Taking into consideration how lazy our freeloading small government Republicans are when it comes to oversight, this comment shouldn’t be a surprise: "I don't see how that's possible," said Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee. "They'll be just pouring money down on the ground if they achieve that goal."

What goal will require public taxpayer support?

President Barack Obama's recovery plan amounts to the biggest increase ever in federal money for schools. The plan would spend about $20 billion quickly to build and fix up classrooms, from kindergarten through college in an effort, to spur job creation and growth. It also would give $39 billion to states to stave off cuts in schools. The bill includes a $15 billion bonus fund to encourage reforms related to teaching and student tests.

And for the first time, fully fund No Child Left Behind. That’s right, pouring money into our schools is like pouring money on the ground.

Many Republicans say it is not a short-term boost but an immense expansion that will be impossible to roll back.

Like we would want to? Can Republicans be blunter in displaying their contempt for an educated public? But education isn’t the only waste of money.

Democrats want to use the big spending package designed to jump-start the staggering economy to send billions to long-term programs to help poor and disabled school children.

"What will happen two years from now when the Democrat spending spree comes to an end?" asked California Rep. Buck McKeon, top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee. "It'll never go away," said Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. "You're talking about a permanent increase at a time when we are in the worst financial shape we've ever been in."

A typical conservative response isn’t it? They want only short term solutions to long term problems. I hate restating the obvious: Republicans gave us an incredibly incompetent government by design, so they could prove their point and gain public support for dismantling it.
It’s happening now all over the country.

State governments are making dramatic cuts to education as revenue from sales and property taxes plummet … Class sizes are set to rise and hundreds of thousands of teachers have gotten layoff notices.

As one Democratic Congressperson put it, “As their revenue base is restored, as sales taxes start to grow, if the economy recovers and home values start to stabilize, they will have to transition to return to reliance on that.” But the “short term” Republicans can never plan for the future. Their in it for short term gain. How would you explain this pathetically short sighted comment.

"None of this is going to stimulate anything," Coburn said.

But education is just part of the mental block experienced by Republicans.

Republican lawmakers tried to slow momentum for expanding a children's health insurance program by arguing that a bill in the Senate would draw about 2.4 million children away from private insurance into government-sponsored coverage. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said "We're going to replace a lot of private insurance with government insurance," Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., replied thatthose arguing the program was too generous to middle-income families are "really out of touch with what these families face."

And yet, Republicans can still say what they’re saying, guilt free.