{"id":215,"date":"2009-01-30T08:55:34","date_gmt":"2009-01-30T08:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2009\/01\/what-the-gop-voted-against.html"},"modified":"2009-01-30T08:55:34","modified_gmt":"2009-01-30T08:55:34","slug":"what-the-gop-voted-against","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/01\/what-the-gop-voted-against.html","title":{"rendered":"What the GOP voted against"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/storyonly\/2009\/1\/29\/94426\/1139\/164\/690381\">via Clammyc at Daily Kos<\/a>, here is a partial list of what the House Republicans voted unanimously against in refusing to support the stimulus package that passed without them.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>An increase in the maximum benefit under the former food stamp<br \/>\nprogram (now called the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or<br \/>\nSNAP);<\/li>\n<li>An expansion of broadband internet access to rural areas of America;<\/li>\n<li>Programs to improve infrastructure and develop rural communities;<\/li>\n<li>Improvements to the criminal justice system;<\/li>\n<li>funding for science and technology research;<\/li>\n<li>Funding for the Community Oriented Policing Services;<\/li>\n<li>Funding to repair, maintain and renovate the Department of Defense (DoD) facilities;<\/li>\n<li>Energy efficiency projects and modernization of heating\/cooling and electrical systems at the DoD;<\/li>\n<li>Improving Army barracks;<\/li>\n<li>Energy related research and development (renewable energy programs and expansion of existing weatherization activites);<\/li>\n<li>Funding for the Army Corps of Engineers (remember the levees in New Orleans that weren&#8217;t funded?;<\/li>\n<li>Modernization of the nation&#8217;s electrical grid;<\/li>\n<li>Construction and repair of Federal facilities;<\/li>\n<li>Funding for clean water programs and water infrastructure projects;<\/li>\n<li>Capital improvements and maintenance for Forest Service and<br \/>\nNational Park Service, the Superfund program and wildland fire<br \/>\nmanagement;<\/li>\n<li>Funding for the Department of Health and Human Services;<\/li>\n<li>Funding for labor and employment training programs\/Department of Labor;<\/li>\n<li>Renovations to elementary and secondary schools;<\/li>\n<li>Pell Grants and other student financial assistance;<\/li>\n<li>Educational programs aimed at elementary and secondary education;<\/li>\n<li>Defense construction projects &#8211; including hospitals, barracks and day care centers;<\/li>\n<li>funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to be used on maintaining VA medical facilities and cemeteries;<\/li>\n<li>Funding for Information Technology projects at the State Department;<\/li>\n<li>Funding for highway construction;<\/li>\n<li>Funding for housing assistance programs administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development;<\/li>\n<li>Grants to states and cities for community development;<\/li>\n<li>Refundable tax credits for middle and lower income families;<\/li>\n<li>Increase tax credit for higher education;<\/li>\n<li>Extension of tax credit for renewable energy production;<\/li>\n<li>Increase the earned income tax credit for lower income families with three or more qualifying children;<\/li>\n<li>Increased funding for emergency unemployment benefits for those who exhaust the amount of benefits they collect;<\/li>\n<li>Temporary increase in amount of unemployment benefits;<\/li>\n<li>Assistance to states for spending on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program;<\/li>\n<li>Extension of Medicaid coverage to certain unemployed workers;<\/li>\n<li>Assistance with COBRA premium payments for certain unemployed workers; and<\/li>\n<li>Incentives for health care providers to use &#8220;health information<br \/>\ntechnology&#8221; which would reduce health care costs for providers and<br \/>\nlower premiums.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>All of the above is dismissed as &#8220;socialism&#8221; and &#8220;pork&#8221; by conservative ideologues, who are primarily to blame for the dilution of those terms of any meaning due to repeated overuse in the past decade. It is clear that modern-day conservatism needs to reinvent itself by reconciling its principles with the very real challenges that ordinary families as well as the nation as a whole face. Blind insistence that any spending on these challenges is tantamount to &#8220;socialism&#8221; is not only politically tone-deaf, but harmful to the nation&#8217;s self-interest. <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/crunchycon\/2009\/01\/red-toryism.html\">Rod Dreher actually points to a new conservatism<\/a> that might fill the bill.<\/p>\n<p>As Moe Lane says at RedState, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redstate.com\/moe_lane\/2009\/01\/28\/the-democrats-have-passed-the-pelosi-reid-obama-debt-plan\/\">the Democrats own the bill now<\/a>. But that cuts both ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>via Clammyc at Daily Kos, here is a partial list of what the House Republicans voted unanimously against in refusing to support the stimulus package that passed without them. An increase in the maximum benefit under the former food stamp program (now called the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or SNAP); An expansion of broadband internet&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[94,43,26,32],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-purple-politics","tag-economics","tag-obama-administration","tag-politics","tag-republicans"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What the GOP voted against - City of Brass<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What the GOP voted against - City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"via Clammyc at Daily Kos, here is a partial list of what the House Republicans voted unanimously against in refusing to support the stimulus package that passed without them. An increase in the maximum benefit under the former food stamp program (now called the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or SNAP); An expansion of broadband internet&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/01\/what-the-gop-voted-against.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-01-30T08:55:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Aziz Poonawalla\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What the GOP voted against - City of Brass","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"follow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What the GOP voted against - City of Brass","og_description":"via Clammyc at Daily Kos, here is a partial list of what the House Republicans voted unanimously against in refusing to support the stimulus package that passed without them. An increase in the maximum benefit under the former food stamp program (now called the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or SNAP); An expansion of broadband internet&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/01\/what-the-gop-voted-against.html","og_site_name":"City of Brass","article_published_time":"2009-01-30T08:55:34+00:00","author":"Aziz Poonawalla","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/01\/what-the-gop-voted-against.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/01\/what-the-gop-voted-against.html","name":"What the GOP voted against - City of Brass","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-01-30T08:55:34+00:00","dateModified":"2009-01-30T08:55:34+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/87dfd5533a0222456bb5ad6eaf152fbb"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/01\/what-the-gop-voted-against.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/01\/what-the-gop-voted-against.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/01\/what-the-gop-voted-against.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"What the GOP voted against"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/","name":"City of Brass","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Aziz Poonawalla","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/87dfd5533a0222456bb5ad6eaf152fbb","name":"Aziz Poonawalla","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a95\/a95f814e7f2984c887f3b03aed357433x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a95\/a95f814e7f2984c887f3b03aed357433x96.jpg","caption":"Aziz Poonawalla"},"description":"Aziz Poonawalla is a member of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community, and currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}