Lunatic Fringe
There
is beginning to be a consensus among political pundits that repugicans
are succeeding at creating chaos in Washington to hasten the federal
government’s entropy as part of their war on America. There are those
who think repubgicans are in disarray and cannot garner the support to
impose their Draconian policies on the people, and they may have a valid
point, but it has not stopped repugicans from going forward with their
plans to ravage the people with more cuts to crucial domestic programs
despite the damage to the economy and particularly jobs. In a way, repugicans are behaving like evil tyrants who realize their policies
are failing and instead of adjusting their message or changing their
course, they have adopted a mindset that if they are bound to fail they
will take the nation down with them. It is not that repugicans do not
know their policies are damaging the country because they do; they are
just unwilling to change because in the final analysis eliminating the
government is their goal as their “war against Washington” crusade
informs.
At this point, it is not that repugicans are
intransigent and creating nationwide damage just to oppose President
Obama, although as he noted two weeks ago, there are some in Washington who oppose anything he supports because he “
had the gall to win the presidency.”
No, repugicans are creating damage to the nation and its people as
part of their bent to shrink the federal government and create a
libertarian paradise with no central authority to give wealthy
plutocrats free rein to operate without restriction or regulation. It is
true that the repugican addiction to austerity is in part to make room
for greater tax cuts for their corporate and wealthy sponsors, but as
they openly admit; weakening the federal government’s ability to
function is their primary goal. They will spend the next month
convincing their supporters that crucial to shrinking government is
eliminating funding for domestic programs despite the damage to the
people, economic recovery, and the federal government.
Over the
past month and a half repugicans have suffered defeats and failed to
impose their economic agenda on the people because some in their ranks
see the damage austerity is wreaking on the people and economic
recovery. In June, House repugicans
failed
to produce a farm bill that exposed the level of inhumanity inherent in
the extremist wing of the cabal who could not garner deep enough cuts
in the bill so they eliminated funding for SNAP (food stamps). This past
week, House repugicans discovered that the Ryan budget they champion
as America’s economic salvation is unworkable when they attempted to
pass a bill to fund the departments of Transportation and Housing and
Urban Development. The repugicans could not gather enough votes to pass the
bill because abiding Ryan’s budget cuts on top of cuts in the sequester
were too damaging for some repugicans including House Appropriations
Committee chairman Hal Rodgers.
Rodgers lashed out at repugican leadership and said, “
With
this action, the House has declined to proceed on the implementation of
the very budget it adopted just three months ago, thus, I believe that
the House has made its choice: sequestration – and its unrealistic and
ill-conceived discretionary cuts – must be brought to an end.” The repugicans could repeal the sequester with a simple vote, but they instead voted for the 40
th
time to repeal the Affordable Care act prior to heading home for a
month to marshal support for holding the budget and upcoming debt
ceiling increase hostage unless President Obama pays the ransom of
enacting the Ryan budget.
If there is chaos in repugican ranks
it is minimal because the effects of their economic austerity policies,
including the sequester cuts, produce the very results they expected and
were warned would happen. It is important to remember the mindset repugicans cling to when they know their cuts destroy jobs and slow
economic growth that Speaker John Boehner expressed in early 2011 when
he learned repugican cabal spending cuts would destroy over a million jobs; he said
“so be it.” Boehner gives lip service to easing the sequester’s damage,
but in 2011 he said “he was pretty happy” about them and repugicans as a
group celebrated their enactment in March of this year despite
predictions they would kill millions of jobs and slow GDP growth
beginning at the end of this year.
The sequester damage is
bearing fruit as nearly 200,000 federal jobs are being reduced in a
blatant display of failed repugican economic policy they limit to
severe austerity. Most Americans are already aware of the number of poor
Americans who are destined to sink deeper into poverty, hunger, and
homelessness as a result of sequestration, including repugicans who
made cruel and inhumane treatment of Americans their policy of choice.
Unfazed by the damage they wrought, repugicans are gearing up for a
budget fight predicated on deeper spending cuts, deregulation, and
corporate tax cuts to reduce revenue and bring the government closer
insolvency, and if they cannot have their way, they will shut down the
government. There is always the threat of another continuing resolution,
but even that creates doubt and mistrust about the nation’s ability to
be governed.
The repugicans are not in a state of chaos, but the
federal government is and it fulfills their two year goal and they have
no intent to alter their course despite the damage they have already
caused. The idea of a government in chaos is the reason S&P gave for
downgrading the nation’s credit, and they laid the blame solely at the
feet of repugicans for obstructing governance. Let’s be clear, repugicans know what it takes to govern, grow the economy, and create
jobs, but it means having the integrity to tell their supporters that
the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land, the sequester is killing
jobs, the bible is not the Constitution, and that their entire economic
policy is an utter failure. Instead they will pursue their current
course and create a nation that is, for all intents and purposes,
ungovernable and in chaos.
The
state of America’s government is exactly what repugicans have sought
since Barack Obama was first elected President and their contention that
the President is not willing to compromise is false, especially if one
considers that regardless the concessions he has made, and continues to
make, they have been rejected out of hand. The repugicans successfully made
the 112
th Congress the least effective in decades, and they are on pace to exceed their dismal record in the 113
th
session with a view to creating another economic crisis when they
return from their month-long vacation. What repugicans are demanding
informs that their goal is a nation in economic crisis, because on one
hand they admit their policies are unworkable and will damage the
economy, but threaten that if the President does not enact their
policies they will shut down the government or cause a default. Either
way, they intend to succeed in creating another economic crisis and it
is not governance or chaos; it is sheer evil.
