Blue: Republicans cut money from the future, history, Mother Earth

Brandon Blue

The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things. Of spending cuts, austerity and whether pigs have wings.

If there ever were a walrus, he would probably tell you that we’d defund PBS, Planned Parenthood and every other clogged money hole once pigs sprout wings. Tasty, tasty wings. Until then, rest assured, we’ll keep aiming for the high score on the national debt.

To me, the most comical part of the entire to fund or not to fund debate is the ignorance exhibited by people who believe firmly that if the budget doesn’t explicitly say, “Really fishy taxpayer funding for unnecessary abortions,” then there’s zero reason to ever cut any amount of funding from them.

What they invariably withhold from you is that federal funding frees up money obtained from private donors or other sources. Sure, the budget won’t say “taxpayer funded abortions,” but who’s to stop them from applying taxpayer money to less controversial items, freeing up private funds for other uses?

It’s not that groups like PBS or Planned Parenthood do only bad things. I’m not making that point at all. I’m addressing people who believe no money should ever be cut from these programs, and that the only reason anyone would want to cut money from them is because of their partisan politics.

Republicans gained the House during an economic recession with a record obliterating national debt. They proposed originally to cut $74 billion from the budget, lowered to $61 billion currently, and the only reason anyone can come up with for why they would want to cut that stuff is, what?

Let’s assume for a moment that Republicans got their way: the cuts never lowered and stayed at $74 billion. That’s a grand total of 1.9 percent of the total budget. At $61 billion, it’s still an intolerable 1.5 percent of the budget.

Pure insanity. Why anyone would want to cut half a percent of our manageable $14 trillion debt is beyond me.

I promise you this: any cut proposed by Republicans will be repudiated as a political attack. ThinkProgress.org — a haltingly unbiased purveyor of untainted news — said that Republicans, when not busy eating babies, are busy chopping money from programs that fatten them.

By how much must one’s weight exceed one’s IQ for the “Republicans hate women and children and the poor” line to work? Are people this dumb?

Let’s take our stupid-caps off for just two seconds. Thinking logically, we can only conclude that House Republicans don’t just despise women, children and the poor; they clearly hate everything.

They wanted to chop $1 billion from high-speed rail enterprises and $379 million from NASA. We all know that those two things are the future; Republicans would defund the future.

They wanted to cut $7.3 million from the Smithsonian. Now they would cut money from history itself.

Lastly those misanthropes wanted to axe $72 million from the Fish and Wildlife Service and $38 million from the Forestry Service. That’s right, House Republicans would chop money from Mother Earth herself.

So, do your part Iowa State. Consider this article a completely nonpartisan call to oppose those vicious Republicans who are big stupid-heads. And remember, opposing Republicans is never partisan; it’s just the right thing to do.