The Republican Tax Scam or why compromise the Cow when the President will give you the Milk Free?

I think it’s safe to say that no one likes paying taxes.  However, every one likes roads without pot holes, functional national defense, public safety and justice systems, and modern infrastructure that supports commerce, travel, and trade.  How can Republicans justify their just say no new taxes position when they themselves continually run up government spending for their own pet projects?  Well, that’s where they’ve decided to lie and say  that decreased taxes means more revenues. That’s also why our deficit has been spinning out of control since the Dubya Bush tax cuts.  Unfortunately, they seem to want to continue this disingenuous game rather than tell the Grover Norquists in their base to take the delusion elsewhere.

Today, the last Republican walked away from VP Biden’s bipartisan task force to find a compromise solution to the budget.  Again, the issue was the lack of Republican will to pay for anything and to stop paying for anything that the majority of the nation demands. This has gone beyond ridiculous to dangerous.   Let me point you to the Bloomberg coverage and I’ll bold the important part.

President Barack Obama likely will step into the final stages of talks to break a deadlock over a plan to cut budget deficits, his spokesman said after two Republicans dropped out of talks led by Vice President Joe Biden.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor cited an “impasse” over tax increases in refusing along with Senator Jon Kyl to attend today’s planned negotiating session. They called for Obama to take the lead.

The move caught Democrats by surprise and raised the prospect that the Biden-led talks could collapse over taxes. Republicans insist on major spending cuts, and no tax increases, before they will agree to raise the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. The Treasury Department says the limit must be raised by Aug. 2 or the U.S. will risk defaulting on its obligations.

“It has always been the case that these talks would proceed to a point where the remaining areas of disagreement would be addressed by leaders and the president,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One. He said the Biden talks “may or may not resume” and that he had nothing to announce on the next steps.

My guess is that Republicans want Obama to “step into the final stages” for several reasons.  First, the President’s direct involvement in talks will allow them to take political advantage of any suggestions they perceive as worth exploiting.  Second, every time Obama’s come to the bargaining table, he’s caved in or basically agreed to Republican demands.  Obama agreed to extend the Dubya tax cuts to the richest of the rich violating his own promise and stepping way over his line in the sand.  Obama also took every last Democratic policy out of Health Care Reform to the point there is virtually no difference between the 1990s plan American Heritage Institute plan first introduced by then Republican Senator John Chafee and later championed by Republican Senator Bob Dole.  We don’t have Obamney Care. We have the old Dolecare.  So, the Republicans have been fairly good at getting Republican policy passed without taking any of the blame. Why would they do any thing differently?

Ezra Klein explains why he thinks Eric Cantor won’t make the budget deal here.  He thinks its because Cantor will lose credibility with Teabots.

Cantor has the credibility with the Tea Party that Boehner lacks. But that’s why Cantor won’t cut the deal. The Tea Party-types support him because he’s the guy who won’t cut the deal. He can’t sign off on tax increases without losing his power base. But if he’s able to throw it back to Boehner, and Boehner cuts the deal, that’s all good for Cantor: Boehner becomes weaker and he becomes stronger. Which is why Boehner will also have trouble making this deal. It’ll mean he made the concessions that Cantor, the true conservative, didn’t. That’s not how he holds onto the gavel in this Republican Party.

One analysis of the House GOP right now is that there are two players in the GOP who can cut a budget deal: Eric Cantor and John Boehner (and, on some of the other budget issues, Appropriations Chair Hal Rogers). One of them is going to have to do it. Which means one of them is going to lose his job. The optimistic take is that what we’re seeing right now is a game of musical chairs over which one of them it’ll be.

But the pessimistic analysis is that if you had to write a plausible scenario for how America defaults on its debt, or at least seriously spooks the market, this is how it would start. After insisting on using the debt limit as leverage for a budget deal, the Republican leadership finds they can’t actually strike a deficit-reduction deal, but nor can they go back on their promise to vote against any increase in the debt limit that isn’t accompanied by a deficit-reduction deal. What follows is a lot of jockeying and fingerpointing, a short-term increase or two, and eventually, a market panic.

Cantor is putting personal power before country here, and in a very dangerous way.

ABC News explains that Senator Kyl has dropped out for similar reasons. None of the Republicans want to be the one’s to have signed the Read My Lips, No New Taxes Pledge, then sign on to new taxes.

A Senior Democratic aide says, “Cantor and Kyl just threw Boehner and McConnell under the bus. This move is an admission that there will be a need for revenues and Cantor and Kyl don’t want to be the ones to make that deal.”

I still think that the Republicans would rather go mano-y-mano with the President than nearly any other Democrat. The hapless Senator from Nebraska–Ben Nelson–is probably the only other spineless critter that would be somewhat attractive.  The only difference is that he’s got no pull within the party.

So, here’s the Republican spin:

In a joint statement with the chief Senate Republican negotiator, Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, McConnell followed up by portraying Obama as a champion of higher taxes at the expense of “a bipartisan plan to address our deficit. He can’t have both. But we need to hear from him.”

Cantor had sent mixed signals earlier this week, first saying that he wanted greater involvement by the president and then insisting that he remained committed to the talks led by Vice President Joe Biden. His decision now appeared to catch some in the GOP leadership, including his fellow negotiator Kyl, by surprise. And it came just as Cantor has been on the defensive in the talks over Democratic demands for greater cuts from defense spending.

Adding to the intrigue was the almost Washington novel orchestration of the announcement. The Wall Street Journal was called in to get the news Thursday morning — the editorial pages of Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper are famous for their anti-tax orthodoxy. And Cantor made his move just hours after a Wednesday night meeting at the White House between his sometimes rival, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and Obama, who are slated to take over the talks once the Biden negotiations have run their course.

I still can’t figure out how the Republicans can be so successful at painting the President as being something completely at odds with reality but they continue to do so successfully.  My guess is they will get the President to step in and they will get what they want.  Then, look out.  The incredibly low taxes will continue to do nothing but drain the Treasury. The incredibly high spending cuts will do nothing but tank the economy.  The dithering around the debt ceiling increase will drive market interest rates up.  In short, the current situation will deteriorate.  Then, some one completely bat shit crazy like Michelle Bachmann will continue to spin the alternate reality and the opposite of truth and facts.  To be even short, we are going to be incredibly f’d.

This feels a lot like watching a high school graduate do an appendectomy on your best friend.  The people that know what they’re doing have left the building a long time ago.