The Federal Aviation Administration will shut down at midnight after GOP senators refused to let go of an anti-union provision amending the National Mediation Board’s union voting rules. Speaking of the matter, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) lambasted his colleague Sen. Orinn Hatch (R-UT) on the Senate floor over the political manuevering, saying that Hatch is only presenting “one side of a story”:

We’re going to lay off 4,000 people at midnight tonight. Do you think that means anything to them? What I offered was a clean extension that didn’t get into the merits of this, which said let’s put this big debate aside and that debate aside and keep the agency working, the federal aviation administration. [Hatch] said, ‘No, you either take the Republican approach or else.’

And incidentally, he told you at the outset, the House Republicans have gone home. They’re gone. They sent this over and said, ‘Take it or leave it or close it down.’ That’s not a very sound choice for our country.

Watch it:

As a result of Congress’ failure to pass any sort of long-term funding deal for the FAA, around $2.5 billion worth of airport construction will cease and airlines will have to stop collecting around $200 million a week in ticket taxes. The up to 4,000 furloughed employees will include engineers, administrative assistants and computer specialists, but air traffic controllers will stay on duty.

–Sarah Bufkin

Yesterday, House Republicans voted to significantly weaken the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which officially opened its doors yesterday), approving a bill that would both abolish the position of Bureau director and make it easier for bank regulators to veto the Bureau’s regulations. Republicans said during the debate and beforehand that they weren’t trying to weaken the agency, just reform it.

“Now that the CFPB’s been passed into law, I think it’s incumbent on us to try to work to see that it’s a success,” said House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL). “I really am just amazed at the hyperbole of the dismantling and the ruining of the agency and the weakening of the agency,” added Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV).

However, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) — whose name is on the Dodd-Frank financial reform law — isn’t buying it. In an interview with ThinkProgress, Frank called the GOP’s newfound concern for the Bureau’s success “a lie.” “That’s just nonsense,” he said:

They believe that you should not have an independent agency. Bachus said it on television yesterday, on CNBC…Now, what they want is for consumer protection to continue to be subordinated to bank regulation. By the way, it’s not very nice about the banks, because it apparently says that if they have to treat consumers fairly, they can’t make a living. I think they’re too hard on the banks…The major part of [the Republican] bill, which they didn’t want to talk about very much yesterday, would put the bank regulators in a position to veto anything the consumer bureau did. But this argument that they were for it and just wanted to improve it is a lie, because last year they wanted to kill it.

Watch it:

The Consumer Protection Bureau — unlike the other financial regulators — is already subject to veto if two-thirds of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (of which the bank regulators are a part) votes to override its rules. The GOP’s bill would have given the Bureau even less of a voice in regulatory matters, even though the financial crisis made abundantly clear that consumer protection constituted a gaping hole in the regulatory framework.

Federal spending in anti-government Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) district has quadrupled since 1999 to more than $4 billion, making Texas’ 14th congressional district one of the highest per-capita federal spenders in the country. With $14,707 spent per resident annually, it is clear that Paul’s constant bemoaning of overly-indulgent government spending is nothing but empty rhetoric used to rouse political support for his presidential bid.

Take FEMA, for example. Following the devastation caused by Hurricane Ike back in 2008, Ron Paul rallied against government assistance for those hit by natural disasters:

In several disasters that have befallen my Gulf Coast district, my constituents have told me many times that they prefer to rebuild and recover without the help of federal agencies like FEMA, which so often impose their own bureaucratic solutions on the owners of private property. Is bailing out people that chose to live on the coastline a proper function of the federal government?

Yet a recent investigation done by Mother Jones shows that while Paul was ranting about the evils of FEMA, his office was quietly planning what they could do with the new federal funds, which eventually included rebuilding 180 homes, reconstructing the county’s seawall, and embarking on an extensive beach nourishment project.

Even after these FEMA-funded projects were completed, Paul continued to warn of the constitutional and fiscal dangers of government relief programs. In May, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Paul if he would like to see FEMA dissolved, to which Paul responded “Why not?”:

Well, if you want to live in a free society, if you want to pay attention to the constitution, why not? I think it’s bad economics. I think it’s bad morality. And it’s bad constitutional law. [...] When you bankrupt our country and nobody has a job and then they say, well, FEMA needs to bail out everybody, then all we’re doing is compounding our problems.

Of course, Ron Paul has an explanation for his seemingly hypocritical behavior of rallying against government programs, but then quietly gobbling up federal funds: blame it on the government itself. “If they are going to allot the money, I have a responsibility to represent my people.” Paul’s doublespeak is just one more example of the empty rhetoric of many House Republicans who want to cut federal spending, but who at the same time aggressively lobby for federal funds for their home districts.

-Jen Kalaidis

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) delivers his budget address.

In a direct contradiction to Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) claims, Wisconsin school officials discussed the negative fall-out they expect from the 2011-13 state budget cuts to education in a Wednesday press conference. Eighteen school administrators criticized the $800 million shortfall the state’s school districts will have to cope with in the coming year and warned students could see “larger class sizes, fewer arts and library programs, and lower-quality services.”

In his budget address, Walker asserted that schools will see more in savings than they would in reductions. His website claims that most of the state’s districts are “in good financial shape.” Greenfield School District Administrator Conrad Farner denied the claim yesterday:”

“Contrary to news reports, school districts are not in good financial shape so whoever is saying that, it is not accurate. We need our legislature and our governor to recognize that we are not in good financial shape…Districts are surviving. Surviving is not the same as thriving. We can’t forget that we are coming off of 18 years of revenue caps that have already forced us to tighten our belts, make drastic reductions and to lower our services.”

Racine Unified Superintendent Jim Shaw highlighted the financial strain his district — the state’s fourth largest with 21,000 students — is already working under this year. After the state slashed $13.2 million in state aid to the school district, Shaw faced down a $25-million budget shortfall, forcing him to make substantial cuts in special and bilingual services:

“We have students with above-average needs in Racine, but we already spend below average,” he said, citing Unified’s high percentage of minority students and students living below the poverty level. “We’re facing a $25 million dollar problem in Racine for the 2011-12 budget year. Next year we’re going to be facing another $10 million deficit for 2012-13. [...]

“We’ve done all the accounting tricks we can, but we’ve exhausted our solutions. I’m especially concerned about how this effects poor children and diverse children in Racine.”

After laying off 125 staff members, cutting $19 million out of educators’ benefits and freezing wages for the district’s remaining teachers this year, Shaw acknowledged the district may have to increase class sizes and cut more jobs in the coming months. Rob Heilman, the superintendent of the Eau Claire Area School District, echoed Shaw’s concerns, saying, “All schools are going to be negatively impacted in the coming year” by Walker’s defunding of education. Heilman’s district received less than half of the money it needed this year to control its 2011-12 deficit.

Although Walker would have his constituents think otherwise, the budget cuts to education will prevent Wisconsin’s schools from providing quality education to its children, particularly its low-income and special-needs students — those who need the support the most.

–Sarah Bufkin

This week, the so-called Gang of Six — composed of Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Mark Warner (D-VA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Mike Crapo (R-ID), and Kent Conrad (D-ND) — released the outline of a plan that would reduce deficits by about $3.7 trillion over the next 10 years, with about $3 trillion of that coming from spending cuts. The plan closely mirrors that of the Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission.

The plan includes many odious measures, including changes to Social Security that would cut benefits by $1,300 per year. It would institute caps on discretionary spending through 2015, and lays out the amount by which individual agencies need to reduce their budgets (without identifying particular programs).

But according to Coburn, it doesn’t really matter which programs get cut, because, as he told Al-Jazeera English, it’s only people who are “sucking off the program” that are going to feel any change:

COBURN: The point is where’s the efficiency in that? The actual service going to people isn’t going to decline, the people sucking off the program are going to be the ones that lose.

Watch it:

Coburn added that, in his opinion, the government could cut $4 trillion to $5 trillion and no one would feel it. Earlier this week, Coburn released his own plan that he says will cut $9 trillion in spending over the next 10 years. Coburn claimed that the plan would only cut government “fat,” but, in addition to steep spending cuts across all government programs, it would privatize student loans for 15 million college students.