Friday, July 29, 2011

Look away, look away, look away, Teabagland


You know what John Boehner's problem is in getting his debt-ceiling bill through the U.S. House? Pell Grants.

Tea Party lunatic leges are furious, saying there's too much money set aside for helping poor kids attend college. Pell Grants, to a certain subset of the Republican Party, are this decade's "welfare Cadillac."

Now we know why the speaker of the House often needs a drink and a smoke.

Me, I'm pretty much just speechless. This takes some doing, and the Tea Party jihadists just did it.

I'll merely say the whole thing
really reminds me of this.


I'M TURNING it over to The Hill newspaper now:
Legislation crafted by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to raise the debt limit by $900 billion would directly appropriate $9 billion for Pell Grants in 2012 and another $8 billion in 2013.

This has shocked some conservative House freshmen who say they were elected to cut spending, not increase it. Some House Republicans think of it as being akin to welfare.

“I really don’t understand why we’re increasing spending in a bill supposed to be cutting spending,” said Rep. Andy Harris, a freshman Republican from Maryland. “It was negotiated without the input of a lot of members.”

Harris has indicated to The Baltimore Sun that he will vote no.

House Republican leaders say they included concessions to Democrats in efforts to forge a compromise that could pass both chambers.

(snip)

The inclusion of the extra money for Pell Grants could cost Republican votes.

Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) has compared Pell Grants to “welfare”.

"So you can go to college on Pell Grants — maybe I should not be telling anybody this because it’s turning out to be the welfare of the 21st century," Rehberg told Blog Talk Radio in April. "You can go to school, collect your Pell Grants, get food stamps, low-income energy assistance, Section 8 housing, and all of a sudden we find ourselves subsidizing people that don’t have to graduate from college.”
DEAR LORD, we humbly beseech Thee . . . HELLLLLLLLP!

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