GOP craziness may end crisis

By Frank Moraes 

Jonathan Chait wrote what I think is a very insightful article today, even if the title is a bit deceptive, "House Republicans' Ransom Demands Falling." What I would say is that their demands are changing, not falling. He provides some important history about the current standoff. The House Republican leadership (John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Paul Ryan) have been planning this blackmail scheme, most likely since Romney lost the last election. The idea was to use the Debt Ceiling to force Obama to accept the usual Republican budget policies. You know: cut tax rates (supposedly without cutting overall taxes, but you know how that goes), cut entitlements, and so on.

Unfortunately, Ted Cruz ruined their plan by getting all the Republicans to support a government shutdown threat to somehow end Obamacare. This was the real reason that Boehner was promising his caucus a fight on the Debt Ceiling and why he tried to get the continuing resolution (CR) out of the way. Most observers (including me!) thought it was just Boehner's usual short term planning: get the CR out of the way and then deal with the Debt Limit. But that doesn't seem to be the case. I was right about one thing, though: all the supposed reasonable Republicans don't exist. Boehner is just as extreme as all the rest; he may just be a little more tactical.

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The marching morons

By Carl 

Apocryphal or not, the image of lemmings committing mass suicide is ingrained in our culture, so much so that we may borrow it to describe the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives:

As the shutdown lingers, some Republican moderates are openly frustrated that tea party darling Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas appears to be calling the shots on what House Republicans do next. Cruz was one of the first to suggest passing narrow bills that fund those government agencies or functions that generate any public backlash.

"I think the leadership is committed to play the Cruz strategy all the way out," California Rep. Devin Nunes told reporters, before adding "if you can call it a strategy."

For two days, GOP leaders have pushed through a series of piecemeal spending bills for floor votes that would fund things like veterans affairs, national parks and medical research. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Wednesday they plan to continue doing this.

"We've got ways to ease the pain on people," Cantor said. "We agree on a lot around here. We ought to fund that, and then we ought to sit down and talk about that which we don't.

Apparently, lemmings aren't blind. They're just wimps.

Congressman Cantor, you brought this upon yourself. No point in getting weak-kneed now that your own supporters, Teabaggers and fiscal conservatives, are feeling the pain. Hunting season is upon us, yet hunters out west can't go into national parks legally. Poor children with cancer, many of them who live near toxic waste sites and other highly carcinogenic locales in red states where environmental regulations are "lax" to be polite, are without last hope now that the NIH is closed.

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Eric Cantor now outside GOP mainstream

By Frank Moraes 

It is a funny old world. It seems upside down. It is as if the drunk dozing in an alley has more wisdom to offer that the local pastor. (Which may be true!) And that is the sense that I have today, at least in politics. When Eric Cantor starts sounding reasonable, anything seems possible. But it isn't really that the world is out of balance. Nor is it the case that Cantor is actually being reasonable. As I wrote just a few days ago, the Republican Party has gotten more and more nihilistic ever since Reagan. The critical phrase here is "more and more," because it is indeed getting worse.

Eric Cantor has long been one of the great examples of Republican nihilism. But the Republican Party seems now to have passed him by. Back in April, he put forward a bill to extend health insurance coverage to people with preexisting conditions. The idea was to make the Republicans look good while harming the overall framework of Obamacare. It would at least have put Democrats in a awkward position. It was a great example of old-fashioned political strategy. As much as I may disagree with what he wanted to accomplish, at least he was doing something that might work. The House Republicans would have none of it, however, and the bill was pulled without a vote. Since then, I think they've voted for a full repeal of Obamacare another three times or something.

Yesterday, I learned thanks to Steve Benen that Cantor thinks that a shutdown of the government is a bad thing. Can you imagine?! According to National Review, he said:

To get 60 votes in the Senate, you need at least 14 Democrats to join Republicans and pass a CR [continuing resolution] that defunds Obamacare. Right now, I am not aware of a single Democrat in the Senate who would join us. If and when defunding has 60 votes in the Senate, we will absolutely deliver more than 218 votes in the House.

If it weren't for the arm rests, I would have fallen out of my chair. Is he actually suggesting that shutting down the government for the purpose of "sending a message" is a bad idea?! The next thing you know, Cantor will switch parties. I mean, this short, two data point trend of Cantor's seems to indicate that he has some interest in doing something, and that puts him well outside the mainstream of his current party.

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Republicans' line on job creation

By Mustang Bobby

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to Fox’s Chris Wallace on the president’s jobs bill proposal:

First of all, Chris, government doesn’t create jobs, the private sector does.

A couple of points here: if the government doesn’t create jobs, then who do all the police, firefighters, public school teachers, soldiers, and, oh, yes, members of Congress work for? In Miami-Dade County, the single largest employer in the county is the public school system, and they’ve already cut their administrative staff by a third over the last five years. The second largest employer is the county itself, keeping — for the most part — things running so that people can actually get to their jobs and provide for everyone.

As for the second point, a lot of the private sector creates jobs thanks to the government with contracts to build roads, support the infrastructure, and provide services to the people who work for the government, be it federal, state, or local. And that includes such services as grocery stores to sell them their food and the hundreds of other businesses that sell the niceties of life like clothing, cars, and haircuts that keep our economy running.

Mr. Cantor probably knows better, but he has to keep up the Galtian mantra so that he won’t get primaried by the cranks who scream about keeping the government hands off their Medicare.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Nothing new on immigration

By Frank Moraes 

Jonathan Chait wrote yesterday morning that immigration reform is different this time. He focused on the conservative push back against the Heritage Foundation paper than said that immigration reform would cost us a trillion dollars and cause us all to die of syphilis next year. As he correctly noted, this paper is actually not any worse than other papers conservatives accepted like Paul Ryan's budget causing unemployment to drop to 3% and that the Bush tax cuts would pay for themselves.

All of this is true, and yet I don't think that immigration reform is really different this time. What you have to understand is that the modern Republican Party doesn't really make compromises. Steve Benen wrote a post the other day at Maddow Blog about Eric Cantor's new Republican rebranding campaign. The great new idea is to appeal to women with a media blitz. And what are they going to tell women? Only that they should support the "Working Families Flexibility Act." That is a euphemism, of course. It should be called the "Employer Flexibility to Screw Employees Act." It is an idea that the Republican Party has been pushing for decades. My point is that even when Republicans reach out to a group of people, they aren't willing to do anything; it's just, "You should love us just the way we are because we ain't changing a thing."

The same thing is going on in the immigration bill. There has always been a large part of the Republican elite who want immigration reform. Let's face it: it's good for business. In the long term, it is good for everyone. In the short term, it is good for Walmart. The business interests who will lose out on more legal workers are small and weak. So the Republican leadership wants this and always has. What's different this time is that they lost last time. Before, they thought with a Republican president, they would be able to get their law. Now they know they have to fight for it.

And look at how typical the conservative response to the Heritage paper was. Those who are against immigration reform embraced it; those who are for immigration reform denounced it. And yes, those denouncing it did it with facts. But conservatives are fine with facts when they are helpful. But facts have no relationship to truth for them. They are just rhetorical devices. All we are seeing now is an argument between two sides that has long existed in the Republican Party. There's nothing new here.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Unreasonable reasonable Republicans

By Frank Moraes 

(Ed. note: See also Chait's follow-up, after Scarborough threw a tantrum at him yesterday morning, "Joe Scarborough Hates Moms, PowerPoint." -- MJWS)

Do you know who is a real Reasonable Republican? Joe Scarborough. And that pretty much explains why the search for the lauded Reasonable Republican is such a foolish errand. When you find them, they simply have all the stupid policy prescriptions of other Republicans but don't think that rape victims ought to have to carry their pregnancies to term.

Of course, in Scarborough's case, since he isn't in office, his thinking has been heavily influenced the Very Serious People in Washington. This was fully on display a couple of weeks ago when Paul Krugman came on Morning Joe to discuss the economy. Scarborough just could not understand what Krugman was talking about. How could the budget deficit not be the most important issue facing the nation when everyone Joe knows thinks it is?!

You think I'm kidding? After the show, Scarborough took to Politico to write a column, "Paul Krugman Vs. the World." In it, he wrote: 

But maintaining calm was not as easy for Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass, who agrees with former Joint Chief chairman Michael Mullen, that longterm debt poses the greatest threat to America's national security.

In other words: "I've talked to other people who know nothing about economics and they agree with me!"

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Cantor's big speech

By Frank Moraes 

Eric Cantor gave a speech and I think it sucked. What are the odds?

Ezra Klein provides a nice rundown of all of Cantor's policy proposals. He isn't too impressed either, but I think he gives Cantor far too much credit.

There is one big way that the Republicans could signal that are changing: they could talk seriously about the jobs crisis in America. But they won't do that. To some extent, they must believe that the public wouldn't really buy it. After all, for the last few years (and especially the last couple of months) the Republicans have been hammering on this issue. But it is always in a vague and negative way. John Boehner uses pretty much every opportunity to slam President Obama for not doing anything to create jobs.

The problem for the Republicans is that it has been all to clear that they are against any legislation that would actually help the jobs crisis. Instead, when they talk about jobs, everyone rightly hears, "Let's cut the taxes of rich people!" So it isn't surprising that Cantor didn't touch this issue. The truth is that the only Republican idea for creating jobs is to cut the taxes of rich people. Since they cannot think outside that paradigm, it is probably all for the best to say nothing.

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Can the GOP turn that frown upside down?

By Richard K. Barry

One of the things often said about politics is that it's not enough to be against things, campaigns and candidates need to let voters know what they are for. It may be a truism that negative campaigning works, but at a certain point it helps to turn it around and give people a sense of your vision, of what you would do -- at the very least that you're not just cranky as a matter of course. 

Perhaps Republicans are starting to catch on. The Washington Post reported that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said in a speech on Tuesday that Republicans need to "'focus our attention really on what lies beyond the fiscal debates' and to create 'conditions for health, happiness and prosperity.'"

The Post even reports that Cantor is trying to let new media work for him:

As is fashionable these days, Cantor even came up with a catchy Twitter hashtag for his rebranding effort: #MakingLifeWork.

Okay, maybe the party of "leave me the hell alone and get off my goddamn lawn" can turn things around and sweeten up its image. It will be fun to watch. 

Polishing a turd - cont.

By Mustang Bobby

The GOP is still at it.

Eric Cantor is set to give a speech tomorrow in which he is supposed to take new rhetorical steps designed to “soften” the GOP’s image. However, Ron Fournier reports that there will be no softening of GOP ideology, only a softening of tone:

The speech will attempt to cast the House GOP’s traditionally conservative policy agenda in terms that appeal to parents, explaining why school vouchers, tax breaks, repealing the health care law, and other Republican standards would “make life work better.” [...]

Cantor plans to ask Congress to require universities to warn students when their academic majors lack employment opportunities; to repeal the tax on medical devices, a provision of Obama’s health care overhaul; and to shift spending from political sciences to “hard” sciences such as cancer research.

One thing he won’t do is moderate Republican policies. Cantor is talking about a change in tone, not ideology, which begs the question: With a demographic tide threatening to crush the modern GOP, is it enough to just tweak talking points?

Short answer: No.

As Greg Sargent points out, there are three prongs to the GOP plan for revival: Change the tone, not the message; rig the system so that they win elections with fewer votes; and hope for a Messiah to save them from the wasteland they’re in now.

None of those plans change the constant: the majority of Americans don’t like what the party is selling, and they’re getting tired of being played for suckers.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Gone! The Republicans fold.

By Frank Moraes 

Eric Cantor would like you to know that he isn't giving up. It is just that they can't solve all the country's budget problems in one month. But four months? No problem! And you know that he's serious: he included the new Republican catch phrase, "No budget, no pay." I've got shivers.

For those of you not up on that stuff (And why would you be given all the news about Algeria?), the Republicans came out of their retreat with a great new idea: let's raise the Debt Ceiling for a little while -- three months. They claim that they are only doing this so that they can have time to fix the budget, but this is bullshit. I'm sure there are two factions here. The more reasonable Republicans think this is a way of easing into their inevitable loss. The other Republicans think this is a way to put off the confrontation until the optics are better.

The House leadership is making a big deal of the fact that they have passed a budget but the Senate has not. Of course, the House budget was just Ryan's plan with all its magic asterisks. But note that this is no longer a fight with the President. The House leadership seem to have decided that it can't be won. Why they think they are going to do better with the Senate, I do not know.

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Not serious

By Mustang Bobby

The Republicans said that President Obama's offer on the fiscal cliff fix was "not serious." So they came back with one of their own:

That framework aims to raise new revenue through an overhaul of the tax code. It also calls for slicing $600 billion from federal health programs, in part by increasing the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67, and saving $200 billion by applying a less generous measure of inflation to all federal programs, including Social Security benefits, according to GOP aides.

For the first time, Boehner managed to get his entire leadership team — including conservative champions such as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (Wis.), the 2012 vice-presidential candidate — to publicly sign on to a plan that explicitly calls for new tax revenue. Republicans say they are willing to extract all the new tax money from households earning more than $250,000 a year, the same group Obama wants to target with higher tax rates. But the GOP plan would raise the money by wiping out deductions instead of raising rates.

In a meeting with reporters, Boehner called it "a credible plan that deserves serious consideration by the White House."

It's basically the same stuff that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan were offering up until about a month ago when they lost the election. No tax rate changes, severe cuts to programs for the middle class, and deficit reduction through the magic of closing loopholes, which is one step away from traveling to the Delta Quadrant via a wormhole.

The only point of this counter-offer was to show what "not serious" really looks like. 

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Dear Eric Cantor, you're an idiot

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Birth control is not the same as kosher food and an organization is not the same as an individual person of faith. Sorry. For that analogy alone, you're an idiot.

For more, read Nicole Belle's post at C&L on Cantor and the Blunt Amendment:

Here's the logic fail on the part of the Republicans and the Blunt Amendment's "moral objection" clause: where does it stop? Who is the ultimate decider? What if the CEO of a corporation is a Scandinavian Lutheran who does not want to include coverage for circumcision, but the Board of Directors has a minority percentage of Jews who do? What if the President of the company is a Christian Scientist and wants to eliminate coverage for blood transfusions, but the Chief Operating Officer has a son who is a hemophiliac and wants it covered? Or a head of a company is a Scientologist and believes that psychiatry and psychiatric drugs are a racket and refuses to include that despite the fact that the head of Human Resources and the person who negotiates with the insurance company has been struggling with clinical depression? Who gets the final say in what kind of coverage an employer can have a moral objection to?

Therein lies the problem. Companies and corporations are not corporeal beings. They are non-living fictitious entities. They have no faith, because they are not a person. Not even a Jesuit institution, such as Georgetown University. The university itself holds no faith. Its Board of Directors even includes a Sunni Muslim woman. It employs Catholics and non-Catholics alike. It accepts non-Catholics as students. Those students pay a significant tuition for the prestige of attending the law school, and even pay their share of premiums for health insurance. All that was asked was that the coverage include a full range of women's health needs. Not for taxpayers to subsidize it. And then in turn, the individual women could follow the tenets of their own faith as they saw fit and either make use of the coverage or not. 

Exactly.

And so actually it's the opposite of what Cantor said. A woman (or man) should have the choice of whether or not to use her (or his) coverage for birth control, just as a Jew should have the choice of whether or not to be kosher. Just as a Jew shouldn't be told what kosher means, a woman shouldn't be denied access to birth control just because of someone else's (or some organization's) moral objections, whatever that even means. No one's telling an organization it has to endorse birth control, just as no one's telling any Jew what he or she may eat.

It's about access and choice, you see. And Cantor opposes both.

Do Republicans really want Americans back to work before the next election?

By Richard K. Barry

It seems that Republicans never get tired of saying the same things about how to strengthen the economy no matter how wrong their prescriptions are proven to be.

Tiresome as it is, the only thing we can do is correct them, again and again.

President Obama thinks we need a jobs bill. Most sane people, including most Americans, think we need a jobs bill that works to increase demand. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, apparently, thinks that creating demand is irrelevant and that we need only deregulate the economy to get things back on track.

Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly cites two papers that demonstrate how wrong Republicans are about this -- one by Lawrence Mishel at the Economic Policy Institute and another by Bruce Bartlett, an economist and veteran of the Reagan and H.W. Bush Administrations (you know, that hotbed of socialism).

As Bartlett explains, Republicans like to argue that freeing the private sector of all those pesky consumer safeguards and worker protections will "reduce uncertainty" for business and get the economy humming again. The problem is that it's just not true:

Evidence supporting Mr. Cantor's contention that deregulation would increase unemployment is very weak. For some years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has had a program that tracks mass layoffs. In 2007, the program expanded, and businesses were asked their reasons for laying off workers. Among the reasons offered was "government regulations/intervention." There is only partial data for 2007, but we have data since then through the second quarter of this year. [...]

As one can see, the number of layoffs nationwide caused by government regulation is minuscule and shows no evidence of getting worse during the Obama Administration. Lack of demand for business products and services is vastly more important.

These results are supported by surveys. During June and July, Small Business Majority asked 1,257 small-business owners to name the two biggest problems they face. Only 13 percent listed government regulation as one of them. Almost half said their biggest problem was uncertainly about the future course of the economy - another way of saying a lack of customers and sales.

As Bartlett concluded:

In my opinion, regulatory uncertainty is a canard invented by Republicans that allows them to use current economic problems to pursue an agenda supported by the business community year in and year out. In other words, it is a simple case of political opportunism, not a serious effort to deal with high unemployment.

Here we have Republicans pushing an agenda that has nothing to do with helping Americans who are out of work find a job. No doubt they are using the poor economy to push deregulation because that is always what the business community wants. And they also tend to have ideological blinders on about the value of any kind of government regulation.

But it is a terrible thought to contemplate that Republicans know quite well that a jobs bill will bring down unemployment, if only marginally, and that is not what they want to see before the next election.

Terrible thought indeed.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Another day, another looming Republican-triggered government shutdown

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Here we go again:

The House stunned Republican leaders Wednesday by rejecting a temporary spending bill that would have funded the government through Nov. 18.

The vote failed, 195-230, after Democrats pulled their support for the bill and Republican leaders were forced to scramble for enough votes entirely within their own ranks. Four dozen conservatives voted against the bill because it left spending levels for 2012 higher than the cap set in the House GOP budget.

The defeat hands leverage to congressional Democrats in a dispute over federal disaster funding. Democratic leaders objected to a GOP provision cutting funding from a Department of Energy manufacturing loan program to offset additional money for disaster relief.

The House and Senate must pass a spending bill by Sept. 30 to keep the government running into the next fiscal year. Both chambers are scheduled to be out on recess next week.

The defeat was a stinging loss for Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who pitched the measure to his conference as the lowest spending number they could get.

House GOP leaders retreated to the Speaker's office after the vote to plot their next move.

Who's to blame for this? Well, Democrats combined with renegade right-wing Republicans to defeat the bill, and perhaps Democrats did embarrass Boehner and gain a modicum of leverage (even though the GOP will never let them use it; Republicans are better then Democrats at the game of political chicken, as we saw during the whole debt ceiling debacle), but basically it's the Republicans who, once more, are pushing the country to the brink of a federal government shutdown, just as they almost pushed it into default, by insisting on unacceptable offsets for disaster relief funding:

Republican opposition was based on House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (R-VA) attachment of $1 billion in disaster relief funds in the wake of Hurricane Irene and other natural disasters, which Republicans, including Cantor, had demanded be offset by spending cuts in other areas. Last week, Cantor promised that no one in the House Republican caucus would hold disaster relief hostage over spending cuts — an assertion that today's vote has apparently proven false. Democrats opposed the offsets Republicans did find, which targeted funding for energy efficienct vehicles. A bipartisan Senate majority approved $7 billion in disaster relief funds last week.

Of course, we knew Cantor was going to do this. He's been playing politics with disaster relief for some time now. And this is basically the GOP's budget strategy: make extremist demands and get what it wants, refusing to compromise even with a president who has been more than willing to give in to its demands, or shut down the government.

I suppose this was, as Kos's Joan McCarter writes, "a major blow for House Republican leadership in their shutdown brinksmanship game," but the risk is that Republicans won't learn the obvious lesson and try to work out a reasonable deal with the Democrats.

"With Democrats willing to hold together against the offset, John Boehner will have no choice if he really wants to get this bill passed and avoid a shutdown," Joan adds. Sure, but do they really want to avoid a shutdown? Boehner maybe, and those willing to back him on this one, but many Republicans, particularly in the House, have proven again and again that they put their extremist right-wing ideology first, regardless of the consequences. And given how much they hate government, and particularly the federal one, they may just do that again. And Boehner may not be able to do a thing about it.

Republicans aren't reading their Bibles

By Nicholas Wilbur

Whether you're Christian or Jewish, God makes a pretty clear case against selfish ambition and hypocrisy in both testaments of the Bible.

Source: WMX Design

Remember Cain, the first man born on Earth? Cain was cursed by the Lord for killing his brother, but Cain's first sin (one always leads to another) was selfish ambition. While his brother, Abel, sacrificed the first-born of his flock, Cain offered only defiled fruit (the assumption being that he kept the good shit – probably the chocolate-covered strawberries – for himself.)

In the Gospel of John, when the scribes and Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman who'd been accused of adultery, they cited the law of Moses, which commanded that such a woman be stoned. Jesus said to them, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her."

The morals of these stories are self-explanatory, but for those who aren't keeping up on their studies (I won't name names, yet), they are straightforward warnings against selfish ambition and hypocrisy.

Republicans would be wise to take note.

From The New York Times:

In last year's campaigns, Republicans ripped into Democrats for failing to perform one of Congress's most basic duties: providing money in a timely way for the operations of government. But Republicans acknowledged Thursday that they would miss the deadline they had promised to meet. They began to rush a stopgap spending bill through the House because, they said, Congress could not finish work on any of the 12 regular appropriations bills before the new fiscal year starts in two weeks, on Oct. 1... [T]he stopgap bill includes $3.65 billion in assistance for people affected by Hurricane Irene, wildfires, floods, tornadoes and other natural disasters. Of this amount, $1 billion would be offset by cutting a loan guarantee program for production of more fuel-efficient cars.

The obvious critique of GOP hypocrisy is that the same Republicans who "ripped Democrats" throughout the 2010 midterm campaign for not passing an appropriations bill on time suddenly are finding that they, too, are having a difficult time with such "basic" duties.

The greater hypocrisy, however, is that the same party that has been attacking President Obama and congressional Democrats for failing to stimulate job creation is now vying for cuts to an auto industry that just recently returned to the black"

Democrats and an auto industry expert warn the funds [Republicans] picked to pay for disaster aid is currently supporting a successful program that has pulled manufacturing jobs back from other countries and helped keep the industry alive around the eastern Midwest. Taking the money away would jeopardize that program.

Though I'm no theologian, I don't think there's anything in the Bible saying idiots don't get into heaven. That said, I bet if the Pope picked up the big red phone on his nightstand and gave the Man Upstairs a ring, He'd relay a reminder to the masses that while ignorance is not sinful, willful idiocy is definitely frowned upon.

Rep. Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia,
House Majority Leader, Big Oil Toady 

Fuel-efficient cars are the future. Even your average NASCAR T-shirt-wearin', Budweiser drinkin', gun totin' Texan wouldn't mind paying a little less for gasoline – especially if it meant eliminating America's dependency on foreign oil.

The problem, of course, is corporate profits. Fuel-efficient cars burn less gasoline, gasoline is made from oil, and oil is a gold mine – a gold mine that donates heavily to the Republican Party.

So far in the 2011-12 election cycle, the oil and gas lobby already has contributed $4.5 million to the GOP (compared to $670,000 to the Democratic Party).

Just as the oil and gas lobby has a role in the fuel-efficiency debate, so too does the insurance industry play a role in the disaster relief debate.

When the majority leader of the United States House of Representatives – of the "people's house" of Congress – told us, "the people," the masses and the voting public, that the federal government will provide disaster relief only after Congress agrees on another round of spending cuts, some thought it was career suicide.

In a statement to the press after a 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit Virginia on August 24, Virginia congressman and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor admitted that "the federal government does have a role in situations like this," but just how immediate or significant that response should be was up to him and the rest of the Republicans in Congress.

"[T]hose monies will be offset with appropriate savings or cost-cutting elsewhere," he said. 

When I first read this, it seemed like just one more example of anti-government right-wingers trying to tarnish the image of the U.S. government in the eyes of the American people by setting up another politically divisive, partisan and months-long congressional battle over budget issues that not only will postpone financial assistance to communities, but which also will perpetuate the idea that the federal government is incompetent, unhelpful and, in turn, unnecessary.

Since then, I've been reminded of what the Roman poet Phaedrus said: "Things are not always what they seem."

It was a less-publicized statement by Cantor that provided context to his seemingly callous, heartless, and politically motivated words:

"Obviously," he said, "the problem is that people in Virginia don't have earthquake insurance."

Earthquake insurance!

A quick perusal of OpenSecrets.org shows that Cantor's biggest contributor in the 2011-12 election cycle is... AN INSURANCE COMPANY!

The guy who's fighting to cut investments in fuel-efficient cars is not only the sixth biggest recipient of oil and gas contributions this election cycle, he's also the third largest recipient of insurance contributions.

I won't make any accusations – that's sinful – but I will make the observation that the leader of the majority party in "the people's house" of Congress is acting exactly like a pitchman for the insurance industry and a profiteer for oil companies.

It appears this disaster relief / fuel-efficiency budget cut issue isn't just about conservatives and their fiscal hawkishness. It's about money.

When you get to the Pearly Gates, ye Republicans, and St. Peter asks about how you fought so ardently to cut American investments in resource- and money-saving technologies, how you hypocritically dismissed the experts who warned that such actions would result in the very elimination of both jobs and MADE in AMERICA goods that you campaigned on in 2010, how you chose politics over the rebuilding of your own communities, and how you did all of this because your selfish ambition for campaign donations from corporate lobbyists blinded you from the suffering of those whose homes and businesses were ravaged by disasters, what will be your defense?

(Being as you're not keeping up on your Bible studies, I'll warn you not to lie. That's sinful, too.)

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Eric Cantor, first responders, and the right-wing war on government

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So do you remember how, with Hurricane Irene bearing down on the east coast, Eric Cantor signalled that he was prepared to hold disaster relief hostage by demanding budgetary offsets for any additional federal money going to emergency services?

Well, guess what?

On Friday, President Obama asked Congress for an additional $5.1 billion for disaster relief, including $500 million just to keep FEMA going through September:

The immediate impetus is the damage wrought by Hurricane Irene along the East Coast, but the cash problems of the Federal Emergency Management Agency have been building for months given the spate of devastating tornadoes and flooding in the Midwest and South this year.

Money for a good cause, no? Even government-hating Republicans should do what needs to be done, at this bare minimum, to help those devastated by recent natural disasters all across the country.

Well, no. Predictably, a Cantor spokesman says that Republicans will demand offsets for the $500 million for FEMA. (The rest of the money, $4.6 billion, would be for the next fiscal year and would be dealt with down the road.)

In other words, Republicans are prepared to put their extremist right-wing ideology ahead of disaster relief -- and ahead of the victims of natural disasters. That should tell you an awful lot about their fucked up priorities.

But wait, there's more.

As ThinkProgress notes, Cantor's spokesman, defending the Republican position (and trying to make the case that Republican actually do care about the victims of natural disasters), stated that "[t]he House has passed $1 billion in disaster relief funds that is fully offset, which we will look to move as quickly as possible."

Well, that's okay then. That's great news.

Yeah, right.

The funds referenced by Cantor's spokesperson are contained in the House Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill, which is adamantly opposed by Senate Democrats. Why? The "offsets" contained in the bill are actually massive cuts to first responders.

 

And that wasn't the first time first responders were the chosen targets of Republican anti-government slash-and-burnism:

 

In December, Cantor opposed a bipartisan bill "to improve health services and provide financial compensation for 9/11 first responders who were exposed to dangerous toxins and are now sick as a result." Now, on the eve of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Cantor is pushing for further cuts to first responders in exchange for disaster relief.

 

Republicans usually target the poor, visible minorities, immigrants, and the like -- anyone who lacks a voice, and money, anyone disadvantaged and effectively disenfranchised. But it seems that first responders, some of the genuine heroes of our time, are also on that list.

Despicable. And just what you'd expect from Cantor, and from the party he helps lead.

Hurricane Irene, Eric Cantor, and the right-wing hostage-taking politics of emergency relief

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Hurricane Irene, currently a Category 3 slamming the Bahamas, is heading directly for the U.S. It is expected to make landfall in North Carolina on Saturday:

Airline flights and events were canceled or postponed in advance of Hurricane Irene, a dangerous storm that is expected to bring widespread damage, power outages and flooding from North Carolina to New England.

A hurricane warning was issued Thursday for coastal North Carolina from Little River Inlet north to the Virginia border, including the Pamlico, Albemarle and Currituck sounds, the National Hurricane Center said. 

At a time like this, of course, it is essential that government emergency services, particularly federal, be ready to help those areas that need relief. Think of the people who will need food and shelter, the infrastructure that will need to be repaired and possibly rebuilt, the devastation that may soon come.

Think back to Katrina. We learned a lot from that catastrophe, did we not?

Well, not all of us.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor didn't -- or at least doesn't care.

Just as Republicans held the country hostage over the debt ceiling ("give us what we want, or else"), Cantor is now doing the same over disaster relief (some of which may be needed in his home state of Virginia, which is in Irene's path). As his spokesperson explained, "Eric has consistently said that additional funds for federal disaster relief ought to be offset with spending cuts."

It's one thing to demand offsets in theory, or even at the negotiating table, quite another to do so with a major hurricane bearing down, with a natural disaster possibly at hand. It would be like if a dying man desperately needed a blood transfusion but you refused to give him any unless he gave you his house and car. (Which is actually how health care works in the U.S., but let's not go there.)

This was Cantor's response to the earthquake that caused significant damage along the east coast, including in Virginia, it's his response to Irene, and it's his response to disaster relief generally. No money unless money is cut elsewhere. In other words: Give us what we want, or else. And you can be sure he won't agree to cuts to military spending. He just wants to cut programs he's ideologically opposed to -- relatively insignificant funding for, say, public broadcasting, or more significant funding for the poor and those who otherwise are vulnerable and need government help, like Social Security and Medicare.

Consider the message he's sending to the people along the east coast, in Irene's path. We'll help you but only if we can also weaken programs that help you. You get some disaster relief, but, otherwise, fuck you. That's what this comes down to. (Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, has pre-emptively declared a state of emergency. Cantor apparently doesn't give a shit.)

This is cruel and unusual. As Steve Benen provides perspective:

A while back, during a different debate, John Cole noted, "If these guys were comic book villains, no one would buy it because it’s just too over the top." It's a sentiment that comes to mind all the time.

Tom DeLay never went this far. No one has ever gone this far. U.S. officials have always put everything else aside when families and communities are hit and need a hand, but now, thanks to the new House Republican majority, those principles have been cast aside.

*****

We can obviously hope for the best when it comes to Hurricane Irene, but at this point, Republicans are apparently intent on literally adding insult to injury.

"Adding insult" is a nice way to put it. This is ugly ideological extremism operating as insensitivity to suffering, political hostage-taking with lives and livelihoods in the balance.

In 2011, it's the Republican way.

Republican economics: give money to rich people and everything will work out

By Richard K. Barry

Isn't it about time that every working man and woman in America realized that the Republican Party doesn't give a crap about you or your ability to have a job and support your family?

In a recent interview, CNBC host Jim Cramer made the mistake of assuming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va) would support extending unemployment benefits "given the chaotic situation." Perhaps not all that surprisingly, Cantor replied:

Jim, the most important thing we can do for somebody who's unemployed is to see if we can get them a job. I mean, that's what needs to be the focus. For too long in Washington now we've been worried about pumping up the stimulus moneys and pumping up unemployment benefits and to a certain extent you have states for which you can get unemployment for almost two years and I think these people on unemployment benefits would rather have a job. So that's where our focus needs to be.

The interesting thing for me is that in the same sentence where Cantor says you can get unemployment insurance for almost two years in some states he also says people on unemployment benefits would "rather have a job." What he really means is that supposedly lazy Americans who want to collect government checks for up to two years need to be cut off so they will be forced to get a job.

What Republican bullshit. Working men and women are just too lazy, in Cantor-world, to get themselves off the government dole.

But not only is this view wrong and obnoxious, it's also bad economics. Republicans want to put more money into the hands of their rich friends through tax cuts, or at least not increasing taxes, which they argue will act to create jobs. They don't care that this just doesn't work and hasn't worked as a way to create jobs, they are ideologically wedded to it. They argue that all we need to do is give money to rich people and they, "the job creators," will make sure there's a job for anyone who wants to work.

In fact, the only thing it ensures, and has ensured, is that the rich will get richer and poor will get poorer.

By definition, to be a Republican means that everything the government does is wrong and everything the private sector does is right, even when that is demonstrably untrue.

As Paul Krugman writes:

When the economy is booming, and lack of sufficient willing workers is limiting growth, generous unemployment benefits may keep employment lower than it would be otherwise. But as you may have noticed, right now the economy isn't booming - again, there are five unemployed workers for every job opening. Cutting off benefits to the unemployed will make them even more desperate for work - but they can't take jobs that aren't there.

As Krugman continues, extending unemployment benefits would help.

One main reason there aren't enough jobs right now is weak consumer demand. Helping the unemployed by putting money in the pockets of people who badly need it, helps support consumer spending. That's why the Congressional Budget Office rates aid to the unemployed as a highly cost-effective form of economic stimulus. And unlike, say, large infrastructure projects, aid to the unemployed creates jobs quickly.

A program like unemployment insurance, which not only helps Americans survive, but is also good for the health of the economy, is of limited interest to Republicans simply because it is not exclusively a private sector solution.

It doesn't matter that unemployment benefits stimulate the economy and job growth, that they have been proven to work. Republicans hold such ideologically narrow views on the role of government that they would rather Americans starve than that we use available and effective policy tools to put the country back to work and the economy on the path to recovery.

The Republican campaign slogan for 2012 should be: "Give Money to Rich People and They'll Make Sure We Are All Taken Care Of." Do you think that would sell?

As I said, any working man or women in American who supports these clowns needs to give their head a good shake.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

And a mess of Bam's barbecue

By Zandar 

And Fox Nation leaves this in a bag on America's doorstep, lights it on fire, rings the bell and runs (h/t Oliver Willis).

Ahh, the president's birthday celebration had black people at it and didn't create jobs! This is where we are right now, it's a brutally long campaign season, folks... and the rampant, ugly, and now massively overt racism by the GOP and their enablers is only beginning. People ask me how President Obama can put up with such drooling idiocy, and I remind them that the president is never the true audience for shock-jock racism like this.

In a sick way, you have to admire the blue-steel hatred Fox has for the man. When the dog whistles are put away and the megaphones are brought out instead, it's proof that the president's most recent maneuver has demoralized the Tea Party faithful and that it's time to throw the red meat into the pit to get some action going (which gives more "moderate" conservative pundits the chance to pretend to disavow the bomb-throwing to look "centrist and principled").

It must mean, then, that the rank-and-file Tea Party disagree with John "Orange Julius" Boehner's assessment that the GOP got 98% of what it wanted in the debt deal. Indeed, many Americans are furious at the Republicans in the wake of this week's deal and the weeks of hostage-taking that preceded it.

Time both to fire up the base and to take the higher ground at the same time while Eric Cantor blames the extension of federal unemployment benefits for causing unemployment itself, and vows to hold it hostage next.  Always onwards to the next Pyrrhic victory, our GOP friends.