When the 2012 presidential election season rolls around and the Republicans try to blame the Democrats for the Great American Credit Default (or near-default, if we’re lucky), remember:
- The notion that the House bill, rejected by the Senate in a short two hours tonight (with six Republicans and both independents joining all democrats), was a good-faith effort in governance — is a joke. House Speaker John Boehner was asked to bring a main to the national potluck, showed up with a wheelbarrow full of horse manure (sprinkled with Tea Party batshit) and acted surprised when it didn’t pass the even the sniff test. And then he pens a ludicrous op-ed claiming victory like Napoleon on his return from Russia. The “arrogance” of Washington he decries is almost entirely manufactured by the intransigent loon teabag faction of his own party. We have a legislative branch entirely co-opted by the insane right — the sort of faction that would have three seats in the bleachers of a reasonable multiparty government.
- The most insane part of the Boenhead bill, besides its obvious political motivation with the pre-2012 election deadline, is the nutty demand for a balanced-budget constitutional amendment. Come on out to Colorado, teabaggers, and see what rigid constitutional amendments to government purse strings get you. It’s called TABOR, perpetrated by a reporter-kicking, tax-evading Republican named Douglas Bruce, and it’s a disaster. Hell yes, we need to balance budgets, but it has to be done by human beings and in context, not mandated by mindless, rigid policy.
- The cuts being thrown together now are going to hurt. Environmental and energy programs, programs to assist the poor, students –a trillion or so in discretionary spending, which is some 35 percent of the federal spending pie, but everything most of us associate with the federal government — the National Weather Service, the FBI, federal research labs, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation (which pays for research that leads to innovative products), the State Department (yes, despite the media being ridiculously focused on the debt talks, the rest of the world continues to exist) and so on.
- The Republican zeal to pare back government should be met with extreme skepticism by anyone who is not very wealthy. That’s because so much of government spending goes straight back to the people in the form of health care and retirement benefits. A helluva lot of the rest flows back to the private sector to build everything from battleships to spacecraft. The term “government” is a very slippery one indeed.
- The Republicans are causing all this grief for one of two reasons, or some combination of the two. The first is a religious, ideological zeal against raising taxes, despite their boy Ronald Reagan having raised them 11 times. Because Reagan, while an idealogue, was also a pragmatist. Now, I don’t like paying taxes, either, but I do like living in a reasonably safe, civil society, and taxes are why we have that.
- The second is a total disregard for the good of the many to preserve the interests of the few and well-heeled. The Republican party, as it exists in 2011, deserves the votes of the top 2 percent of earners, no question. Why the rest would be foolish enough to support them is a product of voters declining to engage their minds and superior electioneering/political skills of the American right.
