I’m sure Captain Ed will be furious about this:
Republicans’ deficit reduction platform, which may have helped catapult them into the majority, is about to run headlong into a hard reality: Many of their key policy goals will increase the deficit dramatically.
To get around this fact, they’ve included measures in their new rules package to exempt some of their biggest legislative priorities from deficit consideration. Among the exceptions, which the House is likely to consider in the 112th Congress, are the health care repeal bill (scheduled for a vote a week from Wednesday), the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, an AMT patch, extending the estate tax, and more.
You can read more about the health care repeal side of this here. And more about the GOP’s Calvinball rules here.
The health care law, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will reduce the deficit by $143 billion through the end of the decade, and more so in the decade after that. Thus, repealing the law will blow a similarly sized hole in the deficit.
Republicans wave this off.
Shorter Republican Party- “We’re so full of shit and you guys keep buying it. Why should we change? Look- Obama’s a Muslim! Deficit! Terrorist! Young Bucks and T-Bones! War on Christmas!”
Dave
Why should the people call them on it since the media refuses to call them on it.
Also, too: This is all Obama’s fault.
ruemara
As if. Until people start publicly calling out their media for being useless and straight up insulting legislators for being lying sacks of crap, none of the death and destruction will make a damn bit of difference.
geemoney
@Dave: I think you meant, “This is good news for McCain.”
The Republic of Stupidity
Isn’t one of the BIG problems w/ Medicare that Plan D – the drug prescription part?
And we can’t even discuss that… don’t want to hurt Big Pharma’s fee fees…
And while we’re at it, it would be nice to see really, really, really rich people, like hedge fund managers, pay at least the SAME tax rates we, the small people do…
What’s so infuriating here is that there’s more than enough wealth in the country to run this place right, but it seems that special interests simply REFUSE to stop gorging themselves beyond any reasonable need for the money…
And we just get lied to endlessly…
Dave
@geemoney: Isn’t that implied?
meh
chill the fuck out man – they aren’t going to get any of this shit passed – it’s all Kabuki theater for the knuckle-draggers and teahadies…quit being so reactionary. There will be stuff that progressives want passed that will get passed because when the GOP passes they can claim it was their idea all along. That is fine – Obama doesn’t care who gets the credit, he just wants shit passed. Quit being gullible.
dmsilev
I like this bit, demonstrating yet again that the GOP has the emotional maturity of a toddler:
What, “Repeal of the Puppy-Killer and Apple-Pie-Banning Act” was already taken?
dms
Punchy
I’m going to try this with my bank. The next time they process a check and attempt to deduct it from from my balance, I’m going to insist they wave it off. After all, checks aren’t ATM withdrawls, therefore they dont really count against my account. And if they dont obey me, I’ll verbally excoriate them as liberal terrorists who hate America and Bank of America.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
It’s almost to the point where the rules should read:
“IOKIYAR”.
Alwhite
But the Blew Dogs will support them in this subterfuge so it wil be all bipartisany & everyone will be happy.
Mark S.
While I was reading the article, this caught my eye:
Best I can tell, what Assange needs is a government official, a Scooter Libby, to tell him what the important things are and how to spin them. Otherwise, it’s just irresponsible.
Dave
Basically, this is the level of Republican responsibility we can expect…
cleek
i can’t wait to hear how NPR contorts itself in order to be fair and non-provocative when they devote 30 seconds to the issue, tomorrow at 6:43 AM.
merrinc
I guess the Republican party’s idea of a big tent is making pathological liars feel welcome because it damn sure seems like the GOP consists solely of people congenitally incapable of telling the truth.
Turgidson
@Mark S.:
Judith Miller calling someone else a bad journalist?
I guess the old schoolyard taunt “takes one to know one” is the most appropriate response.
Dave
@Mark S.:
Yeah…different in that the things Assange revealed to the public actually happened.
New Yorker
Pretty much. I had to laugh last night when I read that 61% of the country thinks the first step towards reducing the deficit should be increasing taxes on the rich. Another 20% think that the first step should be cuts to military spending.
Jeez, with those kind of numbers, why don’t we have a Congress full of Dennis Kucinich clones? Oh, right, “Gays! Ground Zero Mosque! Anchor Babies! Leftist Professors!”
That’s what drives it. My wingnut uncle almost never talks about fiscal issues. It’s always the lib’ruls hiding under his bed ready to make his children gay Jesus-hating socialists.
New Yorker
Whoops, forgot about the “s” word and the filters. Anywho:
Pretty much. I had to laugh last night when I read that 61% of the country thinks the first step towards reducing the deficit should be increasing taxes on the rich. Another 20% think that the first step should be cuts to military spending.
Jeez, with those kind of numbers, why don’t we have a Congress full of Dennis Kucinich clones? Oh, right, “Gays! Ground Zero Mosque! Anchor Babies! Leftist Professors!”
That’s what drives it. My wingnut uncle almost never talks about fiscal issues. It’s always the lib’ruls hiding under his bed ready to make his children gay Jesus-hating sociaIists.
geemoney
@Dave: To be fair, it could be any number of people these days. Huntsman? Boehner? Shuler, even? How about the revived corpse of Leo Strauss?
To be honest, I was just trying to get in before someone else did with that version of the line.
Shorter me: Yes, it was implied, I just feel the need to be obvious sometimes.
The Grand Panjandrum
Like I wrote in a previous thread, Ed who?
Bubblegum Tate
@dmsilev:
Immediately afterward, they’re going to vote on the Democrats Are Big Smelly Poopyfaces bill.
ET
Calvinball!!!!!!
Haha – this is a perfect explanation about how the GOP “runs” Congress.
El Cid
When Dick Cheney said that Ronald Reagan had proven that “deficits don’t matter” (according to Bush Jr. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill), he didn’t mean economically.
Cheney then nor Republicans now have ever given the slightest shit about deficits and debts and their economic effects on the nation and its people.
Because Cheney was right. He meant that deficits didn’t harm Republicans politically, and that is what Ronald Reagan proved, as the champion deficit and debt ballooner of all previous presidents.
agrippa
I tend to see the GOP as all talk – blowhards.
Most certainly, I could be wrong, but I do not see those people doing very much of anything, except posturing.
PeakVT
I’m inspired by this move. My diet is going to be a lot easier now that I can arbitrarily say that ice cream and soda have no sugar or calories.
Brick Oven Bill
One unfair aspect of Barry’s health care initiative, in my opinion, is that it covers crack whores at the same user-rate as warehouse workers, although society’s medical costs to maintain a crack whore must clearly exceed society’s medical costs to maintain a warehouse worker. We get lots of exercise at work and must eat right to keep our energy levels up. Lots of complex carbohydrates and vegetables.
Now, view a real-life crack whore here.
As a hard-charging warehouse worker, and a Tea Party supporter, this just does not seem right, and I am left wondering how expanding full free health coverage to everyone, including crack-whores, is going to save billions of dollars. Therefore, I question how the Congressional Budget Office performs its Mathematics.
Ash Can
@agrippa: I don’t see them doing anything either. Whatever they send to the Senate will be voted down, and in the slim chance the Senate sends anything to the President, it’ll get laughed all the way down the veto hole. It’s a good thing the 111th Congress was as productive as it was; ain’t nothing going to happen for the next two years now.
New Yorker
There, I changed the racial dynamics to make it more amusing.
Svensker
@agrippa:
How’d that posturing work out in Iraq?
gene108
Wonder when it will get the ax
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/131901-texas-republican-get-rid-of-the-cbo
They don’t want anyone to be able to inform the public their facts and figures are total bullshit.
Redshift
@gene108: Oh, no, that’s not it. Gohmert said that since the CBO never agrees with Republican budget assessments, it can’t possibly be nonpartisan.
Really.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
They shouldn’t. In the current political landscape they’re guaranteed 40% of the vote no matter how badly they destroy everything. And a population that can’t go five minutes without checking its text messages can’t be expected to remember what happened two years whole years ago. George Carlin was right.
Redshift
The GOP’s substitution of “CutGo” for “PayGo” is the fiscal equivalent of legislating that Π=3. “If the math says our ideology won’t work, we’ll just change the math, so there!”
Cris
@Redshift: How’d you do that? What the hell is the UTF code for pi?
New Yorker
@Redshift:
I don’t know if you did it intentionally, but the Bible says that pi indeed equals 3 in a couple of places in the Old Testament. Given the GOP’s need to rely on the Bible as a biology textbook, why not as a math textbook too? They should try to legislate that pi=3, and claim that anyone teaching otherwise hates America and Jesus.
Paris
@Svensker:
Repealing health care = invading Iraq
Yup, exactly the same.
The GOP doesn’t control shit and won’t get shit done.
One half of Congress != Congress+President.
Our job will be to point at them and laugh.
taylormattd
This could all be fixed if Obama showed leadership and used the bullypulpit.
agrippa
@Svensker:
That was the WH, and the neocons who were in the WH at the time.
I do not see Boehner and Cantor and McConnell and Issa doing more than putting on a show.
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith and Wolfowitz do not bluster. All four were assaultive.
I may be wrong about that current crop in Congress. To me, they just do not seem mean enough. They seem whiney to me.
williamc
@cleek:
This! Its gotten so that I can’t even listen to Morning Edition anymore. The past couple of years it was horrible; Inskeep or Montagne interviews some high-ranking Dem lawmaker, and interject all huffy and puffy, “but, Republican Liar McPantsonfire says the exact opposite of what you just said, care to comment on that?”. Its like asshole radio theater over there. It has only slightly improved with the departure of Juan Williams, but why oh why couldn’t he have been caught on tape in a filthy orgy with Cokie Roberts and David Brooks so we NPR listeners could be rid of all three at once?
Cris
Those passages merely illustrate that God likes to ballpark it.
Svensker
@Paris:
No, obviously not. I’m just not sure that Republicans, even in simply poseur phase, are ever benign. Even when they appear to be doing nothing, they seem to have the ability to fuck things up and hurt people.
Svensker
@agrippa:
I hopes you are right.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Cris: Yep, god was a carpenter, not an engineer. Which explains why humans are like they are: Close, but off by a bit.
agrippa
@Svensker:
so do I.
we need something close to actual governing, rather than rewarding friends and punishing enemies
Jay in Oregon
@New Yorker:
When Dubya ignored the will of the people re: the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, he was being the “decider” and “making the tough calls” and all of that shit.
Listening to the little people is for Republicans whining to Democrats. Never the other way around.
The Bobs
@Mark S.:
Unlike Judith Miller, Assange didn’t f**k his sources, so how can he trust them?
bcinaz
Republicans are like having to live with extra gravity. Everything they do just seems to weigh more on the moral, ethical, fiscal health, and saneness of the nation. Their only goal is to transfer the what wealth there is left with the 90% to the Helium Cartel (Wall Street, Insurance Industry, Oil & Gas, etc). Privatizing Social Security would do for my retirement what Cigna has done for my health care and would do for some wealth managers what my health care has done for Cigna.