All Fools

One of the ways we celebrate all fool’s day is to perpetrate what we hope will be humorous hoaxes. Politicians do this every day of the year, although the humor is usually inadvertent on their part. The majority leader of the House of Representatives, Eric Cantor, recently introduced an unconstitutional bill that gave the Senate a deadline for approving a House bill and stated that if the Senate failed to meet that deadline the House bill would become law. The Republican Party rather appropriately passed Mr. Cantor’s unconstitutional bill on April First. None of the network news anchors reported this as a humorous event. This is probably because the Republicans did not add “April fools” at the end of the bill. Frankly, I do not think the Republicans got the joke either. It is really funny when you consider that it is the Republicans who insist on a strict interpretation of the Constitution!

Even more amusing than the Republicans passing a bill that even a very young “C” student will tell you is unconstitutional are the excuses the Republicans give for doing this. “We are tired of the Democrats in the Senate refusing to pass our budget bill,” the House Republicans say. “We want to send them a message!” The Republicans then recite talking points from a right wing stink tank, and many of them threaten to shut down the government if the Democrats in the Senate do not cave. The Democrats have already agreed to cut the funding of important programs in order to trim thirty-two billion dollars of spending from the budget. The Democrats did this thinking they had a deal with House Speaker Boehner. Mr. Boehner, however, was not able to sell that deal to his caucus. Now the Republicans are insisting on all or nothing. The Republicans are doing this while saying that the Democrats are acting irresponsibly and are to blame if the government is shut down.

I think the unconstitutional bill the House Republicans passed speaks volumes about who is being irresponsible and who is not. Furthermore, one look at the budget bill will tell you why the Democrats cannot agree to it. Particularly egregious are the riders the Republicans have attached to the budget bill. Among those riders is an attack on the Environmental Protection Agency that if passed would eliminate much of President Obama’s green energy agenda and free up the oil industry and coal industry to do pretty much anything they want to do regardless of any adverse impact that might have on the environment. Other riders would defund Planned Parenthood and the National endowment of the Arts, and there is rider to cut funds for Amtrak. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other riders, and they are nothing more than an extreme right wing wish list that has little to do with the budget. It is well documented that the Republican budget will eliminate seven hundred thousand jobs. Looking farther down the road we have another horrible prospect. Representative Paul Ryan, the Republican economic guru, is once again proposing a bill that would destroy Medicare and Medicaid by turning them into private voucher programs that would subject senior citizens and the working poor to the judgment of the insurance industry’s death panels, much to the benefit of private insurance companies.

In presenting this bill Mr. Ryan is resorting to a Republican tactic we have seen far too often. He is trying to mount a pre-emptive strike against the just criticism his bill will receive. He is saying that the Democrats will lie by calling his bill a privatization of Medicare and a voucher or coupon system. Well, it is nothing more than the same bill he himself called a voucher system and it does privatize both Medicare and Medicaid. It does not matter how Mr. Ryan tries to characterize his proposal it is what it is. Similarly, the current Republican budget bill is what it is. This budget bill is as notable for what it does not contain as it is for what it does contain. It does not eliminate subsidies for oil companies or farmers; it does not eliminate tax loopholes that provide refunds on taxes which companies like GE did not even pay. It does not even raise any revenue by making the rich assume any part of the burden.

The games the Republicans are playing in regard to their budget bill and the games they will play in regard to Mr. Ryan’s outrageous bill are illustrative of the fact that every time the Democrats try to compromise the Republicans demand still more concessions. One thing the reader must bear in mind is that this year’s budget battle is just the beginning. In 2012 we will have to raise the debt ceiling, and that is when Mr. Ryan’s bill will come into play. Then as now, the Republicans will shout that spending is causing the deficit rather than a lack of Revenue, and they will say that Mr. Ryan’s bill will cure that. They will do this in spite of the fact that Mr. Reagan’s tax cuts for the rich created the largest increase in the deficit we had ever seen and in spite of the fact that George W. Bush’s tax cuts for rich are largely responsible for the deficits we now have. How far will the Republicans go to enrich the billionaires and the multi-national corporations they really represent? DailyKos made a brilliant list that compares cuts to programs that benefit the middle class with tax cuts that benefit the wealthy. I invite all of you to use the link I have provided to that comparison.

Mr. Ryan and the Republican Party think we are all fools. In fact, they are counting on it. They are trying to wrap their economic shit in a pretty package to sell as chocolate. In doing this they are assuming we will not use our noses and brains. I say this because anyone who takes one whiff of the contents of their economic package will reject it in the strongest possible terms. Hopefully, the voters will take this whiff sooner rather than later. Please do not misinterpret what I am saying. Shutting down the government is a terribly irresponsible thing to do, particularly during a recession. I do not want the Republicans to do that, but it may be what it is going to take to wake up the somnambulistic voters who identify themselves as independents; it may be what it will take to make those voters take a whiff and reject the Republican shit! There is no doubt that this country will be much better off when that finally happens. As it now stands, the wealth of this nation is percolating up and the Republican filter is holding it far out of the reach of everyone who cannot contribute millions of dollars to political campaigns. The Republicans are in fact destroying the equitable economic system that has for decades made the American dream a reality.