There is just a deep, deep strain of crazy that’s developed within the Republican culture. The debate that’s going on among House Republicans right now is so disconnected from reality. They’re debating whether they need to vote for Boehner’s bill because they’re a team and giving a no-confidence vote to Boehner will basically destroy his speakership. My first response to this is, why did you make him the Speaker? He voted to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then voted repeatedly to borrow the money to wage those wars. He voted for the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit and also voted to borrow the money to pay for it. He voted for the TARP program, too, like a good little Bush acolyte. If you want to get technical, he also voted for Bush’s tax cuts in both 2001 and 2003. In other words, Boehner voted to create this deficit at every single point along the way. He is 100% guilty for our debt. Yet, you won the midterm elections after running campaigns about fixing the debt and deficit problem and then made this idiot your leader? WTF?
But that’s kind of ancient history at this point. What’s more important is that every Democratic senator has vowed to vote against Boehner’s bill anyway. The president has promised a veto. What’s the advantage in voting for something you’ve pledged not to vote for if it won’t even matter? All you’ve done is screw yourself, and the Speaker will still be on the hook to produce a bill that can pass the Senate and get the president’s signature. Yet, they seem to be telling themselves that the Democrats don’t really mean it.
What’s totally absent is any sense of concern that this delay is already damaging the economy and the country’s reputation. This compulsion to hold out for ever-more concessions is frankly insane. If the game is to save the taxpayers of this country’s money, you could hardly do worse than causing a downgrade in our credit rating and an increase in all of our interest rates.
The White House long ago conceded that the House of Representatives has the power to compel them to give up on stimulating the economy and focus on cutting down on the debt. In that sense, the budget hawks won. But they don’t want that kind of victory. The idea that they might throw away everything that Boehner has extracted and chew him up and spit him out is astonishing. But also astonishing is that they’re still having that debate about a bill that has no chance of going anywhere. You can’t absolve yourself of responsibility for the coming fiasco by passing the buck now. Pass or fail, Boehner’s bill isn’t the end of the line for the House. A teabagging Republican might as well kill Boehner’s bill in its crib. At least that way, they won’t have to explain why they broke their pledges for a stillborn bill.
