Dickish Things, Big and Small, in the New Federal Budget Agreement:
So House and Senate negotiators came up with an omnibus budget that will prevent the nation from looking out at a field of land mines and saying, "Hey, that looks like fun," for at least another year or two. House Republicans come away from the deal without any of their larger goals of, as they like to put it, "fucking shit up but good." No, they have to put the defunding Obamacare boner back in their pants and sit around with blue balls until Fantasy President Ted Cruz jacks them off.
But, hey, buck up there, sad conservatives. You still got a number of totally dickish things into the budget. For instance:
1. No, you didn't get new anti-choice regulations. But you did get to get to cut Title X family planning funding by $10 million because nothing says you care about fetuses like slashing money for poor women to get some of the only health care they might receive. And nothing says you want to end abortions like making sure fewer women have access to contraception. Oh, and a bonus $5 million is going to abstinence education programs that are complete and utter bullshit.
2. No, you didn't get to defund the Affordable Care Act. But you did cut $1 billion from the Prevention and Public Health Fund because evil Kathleen Sebelius might use it for Obamacare, and you got a $10 million cut to the Independent Payment Advisory Board of the ACA. That'd be the "death panels" that aren't actually death panels.
3. More fun stuff: The budget specifically prohibits any funds to be used to transfer prisoners from the worthless money pit and torture chamber known as the prison at Guantanamo Bay because the Constitution doesn't mean what it says, except, you know, when you need it to.
4. For pure churlish cuntery, you can't beat this provision: "A prohibition on funding for the Administration’s onerous 'light bulb' standard, which prevents incandescent bulbs from being manufactured or sold, despite a continued public desire for these products." The Rude Pundit isn't sure why the House Appropriations Committee report had to put "light bulb" in quotation marks. Does doing so make energy efficient bulbs fictional or "so-called"? In fact, the budget agreement proudly cuts the EPA by $143 million and prevents funds from being used on several greenhouse gas-reducing regulations. Guess the recent cold weather justified fucking the environment some more.
5. The GOP got to make a paranoid conspiracy into policy by preventing the closure of the State Department's chancery in Vatican City. The evil Obama - no, wait Bush administration wanted to save money by merging it with the embassy in Rome, which is pretty close to the Vatican, if the Rude Pundit's rudimentary ability to look at a fuckin' map is correct.
6. Apparently, Benghazi means shit except as a political bludgeon because the House GOP got a quarter-billion dollar cut in embassy security, maintenance, and construction. Oh, and no funds to UNESCO because fuck those kids.
Yes, yes, there's all kinds of dick moves here. No funding for President Obama's pre-K proposals. A freeze on the salary of the Vice-President and "senior political appointees." And shove your high-speed rail dreams up your ass.
But don't worry. About half of all the appropriations goes to defense spending. Contractors ain't gonna pay themselves.
Conservatives can go home and rest easy that they made life a little harder for women, the poor, the disempowered, and anyone who likes drinking water and breathing. All in a day's work.
