As you probably know by now, Harry Reid was forced to pull the Appropriations Omnibus bill off the Senate calendar in the face of ridiculous obstruction, absurd antics, and stunning hypocrisy. The government has been operating on a continuing resolution since October with funds and priorities frozen at 2010 levels. If nothing changes, this will be the first year ever that Congress couldn’t pass a single appropriations bill (not even the Defense bill). But that doesn’t mean that the Republicans didn’t engage in the appropriations process. There are thirteen appropriations subcommittees in the House and twelve in the Senate, and Republicans sit on all of them and participate in the process of directing federal dollars to specific projects, departments, and priorities. They hold hearings, they work with the White House, and they usually work in a fairly bipartisan manner. All of that work is wasted.
But it gets better. In mid-July, Minority Leader McConnell laid down an ultimatum. He sent Senate Appropriations Chairman Inouye (D-HI) a letter saying that the Republicans would not support any discretionary spending above the level proposed by Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO). Their cap, which included both military and non-military discretionary spending, came to about $1.1 trillion. By no coincidence, that is the same amount contained in the Omnibus Appropriations bill. Despite this, McConnell is now expressing surprise and disgust at the size of the bill. As Tanya Somanader points out at Think Progress, the hypocrisy was more than Majority Whip Dick Durbin could take.
DURBIN: I’m a member of the Appropriations Committee. And I remember what happened…this is the reality…It’s true it’s over a trillion dollars. In fact, it’s $1.1 trillion in this bill. But what hasn’t been said by Senator McConnell and Senator Kyl, that’s exactly the amount that they asked for! Senator McConnell came to the Senate Appropriations Committee and said Republicans will not support this bill unless you bring the spending down to $1.108 trillion. That is exactly what we bring down to the floor to be considered.
So to stand back in horror and look at $1.1. trillion and say where did this figure come from, it came from Senator Mitch McConnell in a motion he made before the Senate Appropriations Committee. It reflects the amount that he said was the maximum we should spend in this current calendar year on our appropriation bills. He prevailed. It’s the same number as the so-called Sessions-McCaskill figure that’s been debated back and forth on this floor, voted repeatedly by Republicans to be the appropriate total number. So we have the bipartisan agreement on the total number, and now the Republican leader comes to the floor, stands in horror at the idea of $1.1 trillion, the very same number he asked for in this bill. You can’t have it both ways.
But the problem is precisely that McConnell can have it both ways. I was most amused to see Jon Chait positing an opinion that just maybe Mitch McConnell has been bullying moderates into giving him every procedural vote for the last two years. This isn’t some hypothesis. He announced his Party of No Strategy in the New York Times.
Before the health care fight, before the economic stimulus package, before President Obama even took office, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, had a strategy for his party: use his extensive knowledge of Senate procedure to slow things down, take advantage of the difficulties Democrats would have in governing and deny Democrats any Republican support on big legislation…
“It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out,” Mr. McConnell said about the health legislation in an interview, suggesting that even minimal Republican support could sway the public. “It’s either bipartisan or it isn’t.”
Mr. McConnell said the unity was essential in dealing with Democrats on “things like the budget, national security and then ultimately, obviously, health care.”
We should remember this every time the Republicans complain about a lack of bipartisanship or that the Democrats are trying to shove everything through during the Holiday season.
McConnell doesn’t just ‘get away’ with ‘having it both ways,’ he’s been rewarded with a six seat gain in the Senate and a Republican-controlled House to negotiate with. But he is talking out of both sides of his mouth. Even the Las Vegas Sun has noticed:
Meanwhile, the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, called the spending bill a “slap in the face” of voters, decrying the earmarks in it. Never mind that McConnell set aside $109 million worth of projects for his state in the legislation.
Of course, McConnell isn’t alone. And he’s the reason that no appropriations bills passed and they had to be combined into an Omnibus bill. He’s the reason that the Senate is struggling to pass many things right at the end of the year when most politicians would rather be home with their families.
In fact, the Party of No Strategy is responsible for a lot of things, none of which are good. In reading Sam Graham-Felsen’s piece in the Washington Post I discovered another one. Sam was a digital friend of mine in 2008. He arranged last-minute for me to attend Obama’s famous speech on race and he made sure I had press credentials for events in the Philly area. We were happy warriors from the inside and outside in the battle to make Barack Obama the president of the United States, and we were part of the bottom-up approach. That approach has been lost, and it’s lamentable. But, the truth is, the scorched earth Party of No Strategy made it impossible to reach any Republicans, to have any accommodation, or to move anything to the left of where it began. The GOP was impervious to lobbying or to any kind of normal self-preserving fear. We had picked the tree clean of vulnerable Republicans and they we’re more interested in discussing whether or not we wanted to pull the plug on grandma than on how best to reform Wall Street or our health care industry.
I have to credit the Republicans. Their strategy has worked for them very well. And it has frustrated Democrats and got them fighting among themselves. The public is frustrated and blames the party in power. But it is a dishonest and cynical strategy. And if you are a rank-and-file Republican, you should keep in mind two things. First, a party that lies all the time and is shamelessly hypocritical will not think twice about lying to you and breaking their promises. Second, if you start applauding dishonesty because it works, your character is going to suffer. You won’t be a good person for very long.
if they weren’t dishonest, they wouldn’t be Republicans. when are people going to stop pretending that they are anything other than soulless parasites?
A Predator drone strike on the next GOP caucus meeting would be a good thing. Their domestic economic terrorism has gone on far too long.
It is not only dishonest and cynical, and supported not just by FoxNews but by the entire Village media, it will harm the economy and America’s national security.
The Senate Republicans (the Grandstanding Old Plutocrats) just kicked the ball to the House Republicans in the new Congress to start their budget cutting. If the House GOP stands together like the Senate GOP (and under Boehner’s leadership they have been tighter than a tick), they will able to force budget slashing through the House — likely targets: EPA, Minerals Management Service; Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Unemployment Insurance; Healthcare; Food Stamps; SCHIP; and on and on.
And unless the Senate Democrats reform the filibuster and stands together (problematic because of certain big egos), Republicans will be able to work their will on the Senate by the same sort of hostage taking. And Obama will be signing Republican legislation that makes the economy worse and worse. Will there be enough Democratic solidarity to prevent veto overrides? If not, Obama, being Obama, will sign those bills.
And the public will still think that the Democrats are in control; they have the President and the Senate, don’t they?
The silver lining (cough) is that eventually the MOTU will realize that their wealth is not growing as fast as it would if there were a real US consumer market. But don’t hold your breath for this sort of satori. It took from 1929 until the Eisenhower administration for that sort of realization to occur after the Great Depression, and still a minority of plutocrats like the Hunts and the Kochs fought the idea through contributions to conservative opinion groups and direct provision of tracts to members of local Chambers of Commerce. H. L. Hunt’s was called “Life Line”.
Thomas Paine had a column on this sort of era, a Christmas message sort of from December 23, 1776:
This doesn’t matter to them anymore – not like it did back in the day. Because China and India and all these new markets are opening up and their money is as good as anyone else’s. The belief is that what you lose in individual spending you make up in volume.
But does it even really matter? Don’t believe that the plutocrats really care about “not growing as fast as it would under a sane policy”. They don’t. What they care about is wealth disparity. They need to be richer than everyone else, but after a certain point the money is just to keep score. As long as they’re all in the same boat, it doesn’t matter that their wealth could grow faster under a different economic regime, it just matters that their wealth is growing at least as fast if not faster than their fellow plutocrats. They’ve heard the expression “a rising tide lifts all boats” but they don’t care about all boats – as long as their boat is the highest in the water they win, and nothing else matters.
You get some plutocrats who are also technocrats and want the system to work as best as it can. Those are guys like Warren Buffet and, these days, Bill Gates. But most of the plutocrats could give a rat’s ass about the system so long as they’re the ones on top of it.
The difference between now and the 30s-50s was that back then there was real fear among certain groups of plutocrats that the rabble would rise up, kick them in the nuts, and take their stuff. They watched it happen in Russia, and China, and all over the map. Rabble got roused into attacking the aristocrats and taking their stuff. So there was a real strong desire among the rich to do just enough to keep the rabble from rousing. Then Communism proved to be self-defeating and today there is no credible challenger to the system we have. So the plutocrats have no fear, and are merrily dismantling the stopgaps their parents and grandparents put into place to prevent an uprising. The rich have nothing to be afraid of these days, so why should they care about the social contract anymore?
China and India’s markets depend on our market. That is what folks are forgetting. When Americans can’t afford to go to Wal-Mart, China suffers. When Americans lose their credit cards and can’t afford to own computer service agreeements, India suffers. When America is not buying appliances, electronics, steel, and toys, China, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia suffer.
Killing off a consumer market is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
But our MOTU are too dumb and infantile to realize that.
In broad strokes this is correct, but China isn’t stupid and they can see the writing on the wall. They have been aggressively moving since the start of this global recession to build up their own domestic markets. This is what their push into Green Energy and other things is really all about – spending money to build up their domestic infrastructure to have a consumer market of their own because they can see that the MOTU in the US are fucking things up royally and they don’t want to be caught flat-footed.
Our MOTU are basically counting on the Chinese government to get a consumer market built before the US consumer market crashes. You can see it in how they’re dumping money into Chinese companies every time one of them makes an IPO. They’re counting on the Chinese government being smart enough to get done in a decade what it took our government a good 30 years and a World War to accomplish as far as consumer markets go.
India may be in trouble, but they’re working on their domestic market as well. And that’s before we even get into Brazil and the rest of South America, who have been flourishing now that the US has been too distracted by Iraq and Afghanistan to meddle in their internal affairs. Basically the MOTU in the US are playing the “can’t someone else do it” game – if the developing nations of the world can build themselves up to decent consumer markets, then they can let the US consumer market fall somewhat and keep more of their money.
Yeah it’s shortsighted and it makes the quality of life in the US worse. But they don’t care – they have their money and they can move somewhere else if the quality of life here gets too bad for them.
If the US stagnates and China and India build their domestic markets, they will increase trade with Africa and Latin America for resources and with Southeast Asia for outsourced manufacturing.
Eventually, incomes will have equalized enough that US exports are competitive again. We have an administration backed into a corner hoping that that “eventually” is short. Only a positive balance of trade now can re-ignite a growing economy that needs to employ workers. And to its credit, the administration seeded the ARRA with measures to put the US in position to become an exporter again. Small, yes, but there nonetheless.
Well that equalized probably will go faster since the administration is happy hurting the real incomes of people in exchange for boosting the wealthy.
Except for some conspicuous consumption, most of the wealthy’s wealth is in paper assets. Most of their income comes from cashing out those paper assets in frequent trading.
When consumer spending is in the toilet, the only way that paper assets can go up is by creating a bubble, and that bubble eventually bursts. And this time, the public will not be in a position to bail them out.
We are in Calvin Coolidge/Herbert Hoover world right now. The actual crash has not happened yet. The collapse of the real estate market was the collapse of suburbia, just as the Great Depression actually started with the collapse of the farm economy in the early 1920s. Will we go until 2017 (it took 9 years from the agricultural depression to the New Deal) before there is reality in dealing with the economy?
You won’t be a good person for very long.
I’m sure McConnell took that under advisement, and came to the conclusion he didn’t give a rat’s ass. He’s managed to turn the entire Republican caucus into political sociopaths. Or zombies. Whichever . . .
Hey, McChinless is a lost cause, but there might be some grandma out there who has a come-to-Jesus moment about supporting a party that puts lying and hypocrisy at the top of their toolbox.
Jesus no-likey the hypocrites.
Whut?
Republican Jesus is all about the Lying for Jesus. Lying for Jesus is a HUGE part of American Evangelical Fundamentalism. Lying for Jesus isn’t a sin – it’s a commandment. So if the Republicans are lying to keep the godless, amoral, liberal Democrats from taking power and handing the country over to Satan, that’s not a sin that’s a Mandate From God!
And hypocrisy? Well, so long as you have a “come to Jesus” moment and are “Born Again” you can be forgiven just about ANYTHING. As long as you are positioned on the correct side of the issue it doesn’t matter if your frail human body leads you into the dark side – all that matters is that you repent. Weeping openly about how you’ve sinned and need Jesus to forgive you is a good touch as well. Having a preacher from a major Evangelical Fundamentalist denomination come and bless you and tell the world you’ve repented is optional, but certainly helpful.
What will get grandma up in arms is when the Republicans start looking to cut her Social Security and Medicare check. But since it’s the “serious Democrats” who seem to always be on the teevee talking about cuts to Social Security and Medicare these days, I would imagine that grandma will be more inclined to blame them when Speaker Boehner introduces Medicare cuts into the budget over the next couple of years.
A grandma? A GRANDMA?!
Who do you think powered the GOP this past election? Who do you think hates the changes the most? Those are the people least likely to have any kind of redeeming moment.
you’re going after grandmas now? I hope you pick a different party from me to support.
If a grandma is doing her utmost to advance the GOP agenda, then I have no problem opposing her.
A lot of us DFHs from the Sixties are grandpas and grandmas now. Don’t overdo stereotypes.
Do you understand why older folks tend to hate change. They are experiencing to most serious and rapid changes of their lives; their kids leave home; their health fails; their employment prospects diminish; their retirement turns out to be a cruel joke; they have to put up with assumptions that they are frail and senile even when they are not; their healthcare cost increase (even with Medicare). But not all older people are as resistant to change as you might think.
But yes, there are going to be some older people in for a cruel shock from the folks they voted for.
And the DFH’s from the 60s are not the ones that voted GOP and need redeeming Come to Jesus moments.
What he did was sit them down and explain the benefits of working together, and why it was a good idea. Obviously this never occurred to Obama and the Democrats, who were too busy planning the party after they took over the world.
Need another cheery thought?
Palestine is moving down the road to unilaterally declaring its independence and claiming the pre-1967 borders. And there are a whole bunch of nations, including European nations who are dropping hints that they will recognize Palestinian independence.
The US is about to be caught flatfooted again.
Great post booman. I see what happens with Brown, Snowe and Ensign as key tests fro the party of no strategy. The problem with 2010, as you pointed out many times, was that no GOP moderates were up for reelection. The question for dems is, do we go all in and try to have these three senators suffer for the party of no strategy, or do we play charlie brown to their lucy and let them play statesman for the next two years and present themselves as moderates.
And I know I go too hard on Obama and his political team, but the party of no strategy was obvious from about a month into his term. I’m not saying he needs to make digby his political advisor, but it would be nice if some of the folks who screwed this up were fired and he hired somebody who was savvy to this game from the start.
jcbhan, from what little I know about the early maneuvering for those three seats, Snowe and Ensign may be more likely to be taken down by primary challengers than in the general election (although Ensign does have to deal with demographic changes that are generally unfavorable to Republicans).
Brown is such a new face it may be tough to beat him from the right or from the left in Massachusetts. The handsome fresh-faced “fiscal conservative, social liberal” Republican can be hard to beat (e.g., State Treasurer Joe Malone, Governor Bill Weld, Governor Mitt Romney). Democrats will have to avoid a bitter primary fight—particularly because Massachusetts’ primary election is held in mid-September.
I honestly ask, who cares about being a good person?
I suppose it matters to the extent of what your worldview is (i.e. a belief things should be made more fair and less harmful) but in terms of actually getting things done in politics when has being a good person ever done anything but hold someone back?
This is the result of a policy and a legislative strategy of weakness. Rather than finding a method to confront the Republicans, Obama used this bipartisancrap to address them. While it was a sensible opening strategy, it obviously did not work, and was easily overcome by the Republican rhetorical/policy strategy of moving the goalposts while blaming Obama for not being bipartisan.
If you trust an untrustworthy opponent, you are to blame as much as they are for failure. I do blame Obama for much of this debacle.