GOP response to $100 billion in damage? Tax cuts!

Amazing, but true. I wrote yesterday that Bill Frist had decided that repealing the estate tax would look a bit too tasteless while the streets of New Orleans are choked with thousands of rotting corpses. But even as estimates of the damage caused by last week's hurricane continue to climb-- as high as $150 billion now-- and with spending on Iraq well over $200 billion with no sign of slowing down, and with an unprecedented budget deficit, etc., etc., the Republican party has decided that $70 billion in tax cuts are definitely the answer.

House and Senate lawmakers said they will proceed with a package of $70 billion in tax cuts and $35 billion in entitlement spending cuts, including as much as $10 billion out of a Medicaid program they simultaneously were suggesting expanding.

Before Katrina struck, the House and Senate were at loggerheads over an energy and water spending plan for the fiscal year that begins in October, with the Senate hoping to spend $700 million more than the House on water projects, including $27 million more on flood control in southeastern Louisiana and $20 million more on Louisiana coastal protection. House Appropriations Committee spokesman John Scofield said the committee has received no instructions to budge: "We are committed to living within our budget."

Oh, yeah-- and to cut the funding for such wasteful projects flood control in Louisiana. The direct results of their tireless campaign to strangle federal government are what we're seeing from the Gulf coast every day. And darn it if they don't think it's time for more of the same. It's absolute insanity. Since when is spending $500 billion and slashing revenue by $300 billion living "within our budget"? And why am I pegged as a radical leftie for pointing that out?