Pulling Back the Curtain on GOP Intransigence

Filed in National by on October 7, 2013

The NYT Sunday provides great reporting on how the GOP developed a detailed plan to invoke this budget crisis just so they could derail Obamacare.  Starting with a letter that called for keeping the sequester cuts AND for defunding Obamacare, the GOP has had a scorched earth plan in place to try to get their way for most of this year:

It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.

“We felt very strongly at the start of this year that the House needed to use the power of the purse,” said one coalition member, Michael A. Needham, who runs Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation. “At least at Heritage Action, we felt very strongly from the start that this was a fight that we were going to pick.”

Last week the country witnessed the fallout from that strategy: a standoff that has shuttered much of the federal bureaucracy and unsettled the nation.

This puts into better context two things that Democrats have been saying for weeks (and largely ignored by the media): 1) That they’ve already compromised by agreeing to a CR that included the sequester cuts and 2) that they’ve been ready to go to conference to negotiate a budget for 6 months — it is the House GOP who couldn’t be bothered to appoint anyone to the conference committee.

The Koch Brothers, the Heritage Foundation (where Obamacare was born) and their teajhadi minions are spending tons of money on a long planned effort to specifically NOT pass a budget and wait until they could hurt as many Americans as they could to try to get what they couldn’t get in the recent elections. This last week I started hearing a few stories on the highlighting how bad the false equivalence reporting that has been rampant during this shutdown. Maybe this means that the press will shine their light a little harder on the GOP who we know for certain have been waiting (and not doing their own jobs for months) to just shut down the Government to have their Obamacare tantrum.tb-cant-burn

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"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." -Shirley Chisholm

Comments (56)

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  1. Rusty Dils says:

    Liberals continue to ignore the word “Contradiction”

    Here is a flashback from 2006 of Harry Reid arguing against increasing the debt ceiling.
    I agree with everything he says in this speech

    http://freedomslighthouse.net/2013/10/07/flashback-2006-harry-reid-speaks-against-increasing-the-nations-debt-limit-video-2006/

  2. Jason330 says:

    If the fact that this was a planned operation continues to be (largely) ignored in the media, at least Republicans have clearly articulated their goals for Democrats to run against:

    Cut economic growth; Cut the deficit; Cut the debt; Cut Social Security; Cut Medicare; Cut Medicaid; Cut unemployment compensation; Cut bank regulation; Cut stock market regulation; Cut commodity market regulation; Cut food safety regulation; Cut drug safety regulation; Cut the Environmental Protection Agency; Cut FEMA assistance; Cut welfare; Cut food stamps; Cut low income energy assistance; Cut child support; Cut Head Start; Cut NASA; Cut road building and repair; Cut bridge repair; Cut FAA safety inspections; Cut air controllers; Cut antitrust regulations; Cut FDIC depositor insurance; Cut immigration and naturalization services; Cut the Census Bureau; Cut federal prison funding; Cut all federal courts; Cut copyright and patent administration; Cut the Corps of Engineers; Cut customs and border protection; Cut the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; Cut child nutrition programs; Cut aids to education; Cut the Endangered Species Program; Cut the FBI; Cut the CIA; Cut the NSA; Cut the Government Printing Office; Cut all federal museums; Cut the Smithsonian Institution; Cut the Job Corps; Cut the Justice Department; Cut the Military Academy; Cut the Naval Academy; Cut the Air Force Academy; Cut the Coast Guard Academy; Cut the Bureau of Labor Statistics; Cut the Library of Congress; Cut the Mint; Cut nuclear energy research and development; Cut the National Weather Service; Cut the National Transportation Safety Board; Cut the Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Cut the Peace Corps; Cut the Science Office of the Energy Department; Cut the Secret Service; Cut the State Department; Cut the Strategic Command; Cut the Treasury Department; Cut the Capitol Police; Cut the Veterans Affairs Department; Cut The Weights and Measures Division; Cut the U.S. AbilityOne Commission; Cut flu shots; Cut The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; Cut Congress; Cut the Supreme Court; Cut the White House; Cut the bankruptcy courts; Cut the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition; Cut The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Cut The Economics and Statistics Administration; Cut The Bureau of Economic Analysis; Cut the Defense Technical Information Center; Cut The Department of Agriculture; Cut The Department of Commerce; Cut The Department of Homeland Security; Cut the Department of the Interior; Cut the Drug Enforcement Administration; Cut the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy; Cut the Department of Energy; Cut the Federal Maritime Commission. We don’t need a government. Let’s be model ourselves after Somalia.

  3. xyz says:

    Only in liberal-land:

    “reduce spending”

    =

    “burning the house down”

    Sorry, not “reduce spending”

    Actually

    “decrease the first derivative of spending”

  4. cassandra m says:

    At $300M per day, this shutdown isn’t about reducing spending. And nor is delaying Obamacare.

  5. Jason330 says:

    Only an idiot would think that they cuts mentioned above do not correspond to higher downstream costs.

  6. xyz says:

    Only in liberal land:

    “Spend some more, otherwise you will have to spend some more”

  7. Jason330 says:

    Not all costs are monetary, you dim wit. Sure cutting Cut FAA safety inspections saves “money” if you don’t mind plane crashes.

    xyz is the typical Republican who thinks that nothing is real until it touches him directly. How did we raise this generation of dolts and dunderheads?

  8. Geezer says:

    Meanwhile, in conservative consequences land, better known as Greece, the economy keeps shrinking.

    Only conservatives are so stupid they believe their own bullshit.

  9. xyz says:

    Only in liberal land:

    “Don’t cut spending – or planes will crash!!!”

  10. cassandra_m says:

    Only in wingnut land — Spending cuts don’t undermine the economy.

    Tell that to all of the businesses at the Grand Canyon who no longer have any tourists.

    Tell that to all of the businesses supporting government agencies who are currently working on layoff plans. And these guys *won’t* be getting back pay.

  11. Jason330 says:

    Now, in only a few comments, he’s got nothing. Poor chap.

  12. Jason330 says:

    Maybe it is Chip Flowers trying to get people to comment on this post?

  13. cassandra_m says:

    And let me point out one more thing here — xyz isn’t even defending the fact that the GOP planned on shutting down the government months ago. They couldn’t win an election, they actually got budgets passed in BOTH houses and THEY refused to join a conference committee for six months. That conference committee would have been the place to negotiate spending cuts or whatever. They did not do that. They just planned on a juvenile temper tantrum to shut down the government and expect that everyone will give them everything they want.

  14. xyz says:

    You mean the economy that has been basically stuck in neutral for 5 years despite government spending that averages 22% of GDP vs the historical norm of about 19%?

    You mean the economy currently going through the slowest recovery on record despite increasing the national debt by 6 trillion dollars over the last 5 years?

    That’s the economy that cutting government spending will undermine?

    OK.

  15. jason330 says:

    By design, and as planned (see the original links up top) – Yes.

  16. xyz says:

    I’m pretty much OK with shutting down the government for a few weeks.

    Just like the sequester, most people will soon realize that quite a bit of government spending doesn’t make a damn bit of difference in their lives or in the lives of anyone else but a bunch of bureaucrats warming seats in Washington DC.

    I’d just like to know where I sign up for the tax refund for the two weeks of government that I paid for and didn’t get.

  17. jason330 says:

    The right’s economic policies have been tried and utterly failed here and in Europe (particularly with regard to austerity). They’ve been rebuked by reality time and again over the past ten years. Tax cuts, the trickle down, the Laffer curve, every bit of it has been revealed to be complete self-defeating economic hoakum.

    And yet, it has its defenders like xyz here. That is pretty astonishing. It must be due to the fact that simple minds require simple explanations for life’s complexities. That and the fact that Democrats bought into the nonsense at a high level. That didn’t help. Anyway, while these nutnicks have jobs in congress and elsewhere in the government, it is going to be a long slow slog back to reality based thinking.

  18. cassandra_m says:

    The problem is that the sequester does make quite abit of difference. There are people not working (and not paying taxes), there is infrastructure that is not being cared for, there are contractors who are letting people go because agencies can no longer oversee these contracts, and whole local economies that are taking a hit when they can least afford to.

  19. xyz says:

    Only in liberal-land:

    “Increasing public debt by $6 trillion = austerity”

    So if this is austerity, what level of public indebtedness would constitute extravagance?

  20. jason330 says:

    Austerity has lost its standing as an economic theory. What the links above points out is that it still has the ability to adversely impact this administration, so it is used out of convenience. Mere tradition.

    When a Republican returns to office, (if ever) we’ll return to a consensus that no level of public indebtedness constitutes extravagance. Or, more accurately – public investment. Because, if Clinton’s term shows us anything, it is that public debts can be dealt with provided you make the right public investments.

  21. auntie dem says:

    The America I grew up in respected elections and democracy. If our side won it was our responsibility to govern the nation and keep it safe. If our side lost it was our responsibility to participate in the governing process and to make a serious contribution to that process and the wellbeing of the country. Suicide missions were never considered. The idea of elected officials, sworn to uphold the Constitution, following strategies set out in a terrorist guidebook would have been unheard of. And yet, that is where we find ourselves today.

    The Koch Brothers, the Heritage Foundation, and the other organizations of the uber wealthy have developed strategies to nullify elections and take us down the path to destruction. These people have no vested interest in seeing America and the American people prosper. They serve wealth. Global wealth with no loyalty to any nation or peoples. Where they failed to buy elections they have created other insidious strategies to cripple our government, our economy, and our democracy.

    We used to say that the rich were motivated by the almighty dollar but in today’s world even the dollar is no longer enough for these people. They have no loyalty to any currency and wealth is fungible around the world. They don’t care what currency they own as long as they own it all. There are no scraps from their table for the poor. They devour every crumb. Even their minions in the Tea Party won’t share in their ultimate goal of world domination. They are laughing at the ignorance of their followers as they pull the puppet strings.

    Today we face a crisis in this country that demands courage from our leaders. Please President Obama, stay tough. Make the decisions you must to protect our democracy. The time for compromise is over. Hang tough for the sake of your daughters’ future. We don’t want to wake up in the Federation of Koch Brothers States.

  22. cassandra_m says:

    The problem with the exploding deficit argument is that the exploding deficits no longer exist:

  23. Geezer says:

    You mean the economy that has been basically stuck in neutral for 5 years despite government spending that averages 22% of GDP vs the historical norm of about 19%?
    You mean the economy currently going through the slowest recovery on record despite increasing the national debt by 6 trillion dollars over the last 5 years?
    That’s the economy that cutting government spending will undermine?”

    That weak economy is the direct result of Republicans refusing to spend enough to bring about recovery.

    Your failure to understand economics does not constitute a Democratic problem. It’s the reason the Republican party is marching double-time toward extinction. Don’t worry, we won’t miss you.

  24. puck says:

    Obama will probably be seen by historians as not bold enough. His economic plan was to keep the crashed Bush economy essentially in place, and to let it lie flat on its back until inherent American vigor eventually let it recover on its own- until we got back to the conditions of the Bush Administration. That was no better than a 50/50 proposition, and it required keeping a delicate stability of all other factors. Obama did well to stay out of another American sponsored war in the Middle East, but now theRepublicans are the black swan.

  25. Geezer says:

    “His economic plan was to keep the crashed Bush economy essentially in place, and to let it lie flat on its back until inherent American vigor eventually let it recover on its own”

    Only if the historians in question are the kind of dolts who think the Republicans had nothing to do with this.

  26. xyz says:

    So the $6 trillion in additional government debt since 2008 does not exist?

    Those bondholders are going to be mighty upset when they find this out.

  27. xyz says:

    “His economic plan… was to keep the crashed economy in place, and let it lie flat on it’s back”

    Good plan. Let’s go with that.

  28. xyz says:

    “That weak economy is the direct result of Republicans refusing to spend enough to bring about recovery”

    Paul – Paul Krugman – Is that really you posting on this dipshit liberal blog?

    I would have thought your day job at the Times kept you plenty busy, until I thought about it a little bit and realized you hadn’t written a column with an original thought in about 5 years.

  29. Jason330 says:

    Now you just sound sad and confused. Time to hang it up.

  30. Geezer says:

    “So the $6 trillion in additional government debt since 2008 does not exist?”

    Sure it does — the biggest recession since the 1930s will do that. So what?

    You sure do have nerve, though — I can’t believe such a braindead parrot as you would criticize anyone for a lack of original thought.

  31. cassandra_m says:

    Government Debt:

    The debt wingnuts are screaming about is the debt their leaders racked up. Wars, Medicare Part D, tax cuts — none of it paid for — and they have the nerve to be screaming about this President cleaning up their mess. Time to hang it up indeed. Manufactured outrage for an issue they completely manufactured.

  32. xyz says:

    Nice chart, except it stops three years ago.

    Average US debt to GDP ratio from 1929 to 2008: 52%

    From 2009-2013: 92%

    The last four years have featured the highest debt to GDP ratio since 1944-47, when we were saving the world for democracy.

    Not sure you want to hang your hat on debt/GDP ratio as an Obama supporter.

  33. cassandra_m says:

    It doesn’t change the fact that we’re paying off the GOP excesses. After you’ve maxed out your credit card, you still have to pay the debt plus interest even if you do hand the card over to your wife. This President has greatly slowed down the deficit spending — meaning that the amount of money that is added to the debt is slowing down, but you still have to pay off all the stuff the GOP administrations bought.

    Come back when you know how money works.

  34. cassandra_m says:

    We wouldn’t be in the debt hole we have without Reagan and the two Bushes:

  35. xyz says:

    “This President has greatly slowed down the deficit spending — meaning that the amount of money that is added to the debt is slowing down”

    You say that, but the numbers do not support your argument.

    Here’s a hint – if you are trying to demonstrate that your guy doesn’t have a spending problem, don’t show a chart that shows exponential growth in the national debt on his watch.

    I thought you guys were reality based.

  36. liberalgeek says:

    Perhaps you don’t know what exponents are…

  37. jason330 says:

    @Cassadra, I applaud your attempts at education here. We have two decade’s worth of evidence that deficit hawks are all wet.

    But some people are impervious to facts, logic and reason because they operate in a faith-based values system. Either that or his livelihood depends on ignoring the truth. Either way, this guy is a lost cause.

  38. Jason330 says:

    BTW – This offer is still out there. Any chance I might be in the company of a brave conservative for once?

  39. xyz says:

    What makes you think I am a conservative?

  40. cassandra_m says:

    I think that LG has provided the correct diagnosis here. One of the things we know for certain is that a basic innumeracy is the Poll Tax for joining the modern GOP.

  41. xyz says:

    Well, I’m not the one that is claiming an average of 92 % is smaller than an average of 52%.

    I took a few semesters of calculus, one of differential equations, and one on matrix algebra that I can’t remember a blessed thing from. Plus numerical methods, although one could argue that was a basic programming course.

    Did you take any mathematics while earning that liberal arts degree of yours?

  42. cassandra_m says:

    I’m an engineer which should answer your question.

    And confirms your basic innumeracy here.

  43. xyz says:

    Jason330 – Bad form to try and change the subject while you are getting pummeled.

    And the very fact that you think your thesis could be proven or disproven shows the limitations of your (presumably adult) intellect.

  44. xyz says:

    Let me guess – environmental engineer?

    Certainly an academic in any event.

  45. Jason330 says:

    I guess it is far easier to go blabbering some nonsense that you heard on the radio, than try to support your arguments.

    I knew my $50.00 was still safe. Coward.

  46. cassandra_m says:

    Definitely not an academic.

    Unless you think that the only people who can do fairly basic financial math are those in academia. Which, of course, confirms your basic innumeracy here.

  47. Jason330 says:

    So that everyone knows what you are running away from:

    If anyone can present any evidence that the “tried and true policies of small government and low regulation” actually created any broad based, long term, durable economic growth …ever – I will give the person providing the evidence a crisp new $50.00 bill.

    That should be easy to prove if you think “small government and low regulation” can have some kind of positive impact on the economy. And yet, somehow the economic magic of “small government and low regulation” only lives in the imaginations of wingnuts.

  48. bamboozer says:

    Passed a sign in front of a small business on rt.13 near New Castle: “John Boehner loves America like O.J. loved Nicole”. Petty arguments or not your losing the business community over this one conservatives, and with them goes there money and your majority in the house.

  49. Geezer says:

    You are cherry-picking statistics and ignoring all context — for example, the fact that Obama has not been able to institute Democratic policies because Republicans won’t let him. And anyone who argues with percentages instead of numbers is inherently trying to warp the argument, as you would know if you really respect the math.

    If you’re not a conservative, what’s your point?

  50. xyz says:

    Percentages or numbers (actually, both are numbers, but let’s leave that aside for now), it doesn’t matter. The amount of federal debt created under Obama is unprecedented in American history.

    My point is that Federal spending is currently at an unsustainable level.

  51. jason330 says:

    Federal spending is currently at an unsustainable level because I said so. Also, shut up.

    Your logic is wanting.

  52. Geezer says:

    I agree. We should slash military spending to get the budget under control.

  53. puck says:

    “The amount of federal debt created under Obama is unprecedented in American history.

    That’s because Bush cut taxes to an unsustainably low level, and Obama did too little too late to raise them.

  54. cassandra_m says:

    The amount of federal debt created under Obama is unprecedented in American history.

    Why xyz is never going to have any credibility in these claims:

    1. He does not understand that debt is not wiped up between Presidential administrations. It is additive, and

    2. Compounding. It is the biggest thing at work here given that the deficit is definitely falling.

  55. puck says:

    Notice how when you start pointing out the deficit is falling, all the right-wingers suddenly start talking about debt. It’s not as if most people know the difference anyway, which makes it fertile ground for Republicans.

  56. Tom McKenney says:

    @xyz The amount of federal debt created under Obama is unprecedented in American history.

    This completely destroys any credibility you might have had. He was handed a failing economy plus two unfunded wars and a huge unfunded entitlement program ( Medicare part D ) but has been able to move the deficits lower. If he had any cooperation from the Republicans; I wonder how well his policies would have worked out.