Kentucky Repugs Voted Down Only Budget That Does What Kentuckians Want

The Back to Work Budget creates jobs, grows the economy, helps the middle class, protects social security and medicare, maintains the social safety net and yet reduces the deficit.

But Kentucky's congressional repugs voted it down: cAndy Barr in the Sixth District, Hal Rogers in the Fifith, Thomas Massie in the Fourth, Brett Guthrie in the Second and Ed Whitfield in the First.  All voted for the granny-starving economy-killing Blueprint for Feudalism of Paul Ryan, but not for the one budget that would help Kentuckians.

John Yarmuth, of course, voted for it.

Down with Tyranny:

No one thought it would pass. It's far too good-- too sensible, too weighted towards the non-rich-- for any Republican to consider voting for it. It failed today 84-327 and, sure enough, not a single Republican voted for it. But, then again, neither did most Democrats. More than a few non-Progressive Caucus Members voted for it-- like Stephen Lynch who desperately wants Massachusetts Democratic primary voters to think he's a progressive-- but I was horrified and disappointed by the CPC members who didn't vote for it, as well as by other progressives who voted NO.

Last week, writing at Huffington Post, R.J. Eskow, explained why the CPC budget vote is the most important budget battle in the country.

We won't have a functioning democracy until more of our representatives stand up for the principles in this document. That's why every Representative's vote for this budget matters. It's why each member of the House, and each of us, needs to stand up and be counted.

The CPC budget is smart, effective, and practical, creating up to seven million jobs while reducing the Federal deficit by $4.4 trillion. And yet it's being marginalized by the press and dismissed by leaders of the CPC's own Democratic Party.  Its provisions are enormously popular with voters across the political spectrum. And yet in Washington's insular world of self-fulfilling prophecies we're told that this budget is unimportant because "it will never pass."

...The CPC budget begins by recognizing what most sensible economists understand: A lingering recessionary economy like ours needs an up-front jolt of public investment. (The first one wasn't big enough.) It invests $2.1 trillion in public investment and jobs growth, with $700 billion in its first twelve months.

That sounds like a lot until we compare it to the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which, as Bill Moyers notes, may be as much as $4.4 trillion (plus another trillion in interest). Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates that it will take another $3 trillion just to cover the overall cost of medical care for wounded soldiers.

Next to that, $2.1 trillion to restore our damaged economy is a bargain. The budget would create an estimated 6.9 million jobs, cut wasteful Pentagon spending, reduce Medicare costs by ending corporate giveaways, modestly increase tax levels for high- and ultra-high-income Americans, and assess Wall Street for its excessive risk-tasking behavior.

It reduces the deficit in part because its up-front expenditures are an investment, not a military waste of money (or, far more tragically, of lives).

The only high-ranking House Democrats who voted for it were Jim Clyburn (SC), the Assistant Majority Leader and Xavier Becerra (CA), the Caucus Chairman. The rest of the leadership team all voted with the Republicans: Pelosi, Hoyer, Crowley, Israel... Wasserman-Schultz hid in the ladies room during the vote.

I'm not going to bother to mention all the Blue Dogs and New Dems who crossed the aisle and voted with the Republicans against the only sensible budget that's been proposed this year. But I do want to point out a list of Congressional Progressive Caucus members who voted against the budget; just shocking:

SNIP

Being pro-Choice or pro-gay marriage or against racism doesn't automatically make someone a progressive. If you don't care about economic justice issues... you're something else.

Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

As Yglesias says, Brooks ends up making the case about as well as anyone actually trying to make it could.  The former’s summary is useful:

Long story short, I would say the CPC budget has the following main advantages over the Ryan budget:

• More food and medical care for poor children.
• Less air pollution and a meaningful chance to avert the worst consequences of climate change.
• Lower taxes on middle-class and working-poor families.
• Medicare reform focused on reducing the unit price of health care services rather than increasing it.
• More funding for transportation infrastructure and basic research.

Brooks says the Ryan budget has the following main advantages over the CPC budget:

• High-income individuals will be less inclined to take vacations or retire and more inclined to work long hours.

This is…not a difficult choice.