Mike Arcuri Won’t Support Fiscally Conservative Bill
Mike Arcuri, the Blue Dog Democrat who sits in Congress for us here in Trumansburg, likes to claim that he’s a “fiscal conservative”. Fiscal conservatism is how Congressman Arcuri justifies running to join the Republicans to vote against health care reform, and against climate legislation.
Is Representative Arcuri truly “fiscally conservative”, though, or does he just use that term as an excuse to support the Republican agenda? A recently introduced bill, H.R. 5353, provides a good test of Arcuri’s true fiscal character.
H.R. 5353 would eliminate federal taxes on the first $35,000 of every American’s income ($70,000 for married couples). Just think of how that tax cut could help you in these economically difficult times. The bill would also pay off 16 billion dollars of the federal budget deficit, providing a savings for the American people that will compound year after year.
How would H.R. 5353 accomplish this feat? It would merely require the Pentagon to pay for its activities through its official budget, rather than taking hundreds of billions of dollar in extra requests to Congress. So long as the Pentagon cuts its most outrageous pork barrel spending – such as money just approved for a second engine for the F-35, a single engine airplane – this requirement shouldn’t be a problem. The U.S. military budget is so filled with waste that it’s as large as the military budgets of all the other nations on Earth combined. Our planet’s 2nd largest military budget is from the European Union, and they’re U.S. allies.
Maurice Hinchey, the U.S. Representative for the district that includes our neighbor Ithaca, has cosponsored the bill. But Michael Arcuri? Apparently he doesn’t approve of this sort of fiscal conservatism. H.R. 5353 gives Arcuri a chance to dramatically cut taxes and pay down the deficit, but Arcuri won’t sign his name to the effort.
You say “So long as the Pentagon cuts its most outrageous pork barrel spending…” but the article you cite clearly states that the Pentagon doesn’t want this second engine. It’s Congress, not the Pentagon, doing this. Congress constantly buys military hardware that the Pentagon doesn’t want or need. My former Senator, Patty Murray, was particularly good at building and buying ships for the Navy that the Navy didn’t want. But Patty Murray got them for the Navy, so now the Navy has to keep them and maintain them. The ships do nothing, because they’re not useful to the Navy, but the Navy still has to maintain them Nearly every Senator, and most Representatives, do this.
So, if the Pentagon knows what it wants and needs, but Congress buys it other stuff, why is the Pentagon to blame? I’m all for drastically cutting the Pentagon’s budget, but it seems wrong to blame them for spending money on stuff they clearly state they don’t want in the first place. Congress is the biggest problem, not the Pentagon.
Yes, cut their budget. Then cut it again, and then again. Spend money on making allies, rather than making enemies. Make it clear what the Pentagon must pay for. Don’t hide the costs of several wars outside the general budget. But don’t apply blame for idiotic programs to the wrong parties.
Precisely which portion of the military industrial congressional complex Jonathan assigned blame to, doesn’t really matter in regards to the main point of his post, which was about Arcuri’s false fiscal conservatism.
Peter, in attempting to place pressure on our U.S. Representative Michael Arcuri, I’m directing responsibility exactly to the target you suggest: The U.S. Congress. In the sentence you partially quote, I’m attempting to express the idea that the Pentagon’s budget has plenty of room for cutting. Perhaps it’s not as clear in that meaning as you’d like, but I think that my multiple references to H.R. 5353, a piece of congressional legislation, make it plain that I’m suggesting that the U.S. Congress take action.