Republican Budget Priorities, Brought to You by Iranian Ayatollahs

The people of Iran have taken to the streets again to protest a stifling theocracy. Good for them. While Iran’s government is no worse than American ally Saudi Arabia, or a host of other repressive nations, the Ayatollahs have shown little regard for the well-being of the Iranian people since the Shah’s overthrow. The poor Iranians ousted one inconsiderate secular dictator and replaced him with a collection of inconsiderate religious dictators.

What exactly does inconsiderate mean? How does the Iranian clerical establishment operate, and what transgressions do they commit to provoke the ire of the Iranian people? The most recent protests were spurred by the leak of a draft Iranian budget. When seen:

Iranians discovered that billions of dollars were going to hard-line organizations, the military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and religious foundations that enrich the clerical elite. At the same time, the budget proposed to end cash subsidies for millions of citizens, increase fuel prices and privatize public schools.

Seem familiar? If you pay any attention to American politics, it should. This is the budget template the Senate Republicans and House Republicans have pushed for decades, and it includes many of the priorities in the newly signed tax law. Who needs affordable health insurance when one can overly fund the world’s most overly-funded military? Why bother channeling funds to education initiatives when there are billionaires who need even more money?

The only real difference between what is happening in Iran and what is happening in America seems to be that the Iranians aren’t falling for the trick. They’re out in the streets, legitimately outraged about why their elites need to be more ensconced in bubbles of wealth, while many American voters seem to think the extra $1,200 they’ll get from the GOP tax “break” (for the few years it lasts, anyhow) are worth the cost of a crumbling society that can only afford to sustain its military and its uber-wealthy. But the priorities of the respective budgets could have been conceived by the same person and simply transposed from one country to the other. Substitute clerical elite for billionaires and voila! the Iranian budget becomes the Republican plan. Switch Islamic Revolutionary Guard with American Special Forces, and you see the priorities of the ayatollahs align quite well with the priorities of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and the rest of their cronies.

Even more depressing than what both groups choose to fund is WHO both groups choose to harm: the average citizen of their respective countries. Privatizing public education….Betsy Devos much? Ending cash subsidies for citizens…ensuring people lose healthcare through rising insurance premiums. Both ostensibly “Islamic” clerics and ostensibly “Christian” Senators disavowed whatever positive teachings their respective religions offered to make sure that the ordinary citizens of their respective countries suffer.

We’ve known for a long time that the Iranian regime is repressive. How long will we continue pretending that America’s conservative party isn’t equally as disinterested in the well-being of our citizens?