The Republican Agenda

Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table.  That was our first sign that a Democratic Congress was coming in on midterm election wins, but as geldings and steers.

Can you Feel the Crazy Tonight?

Not so with incoming Republicans.  Get ready for congressional hearings worthy of coverage by Jesse Ventura and Conspiracy Theory.  The Republican Party has clearly continued its path down into the Valley of B&gF$ck crazy.

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension – a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.

Well, make that the Issa Zone where every whack-a-do conspiracy theory from the right will get a subpoena and an airing on C-SPAN.  All on your dime.  Here’s a choice few nutty items as reported by Politico today.

According to an outline of the committee’s hearing topics obtained by POLITICO, the House Oversight and Government Reform is also planning to investigate how regulation impacts job creation, the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the foreclosure crisis; recalls at the Food and Drug Administration and the failure of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to agree on the causes of the market meltdown.

Issa’s even went as far as calling the Obama administration the most corrupt in history.  He’s walked that one back already.  You know, I’m not fond of the current POTUS but any one remember Nixon and the Watergate break-in?  Reagan/Bush and Iran-Contra? How about the Tea Pot Dome scandal?   I’m not seeing corruption right now in the White House; just incompetence and cave-ins.

Asked on “Fox News Sunday” about reports that the White House is staffing up on lawyers to prepare for his oversight hearings, Issa said: “They’re going to need more accountants.

“It’s more of an accounting function than legal function,” Issa said. “It’s more about the inspector generals than it is about lawyers in the White House. And the sooner the administration figures out that the enemy is the bureaucracy and the wasteful spending, not the other party, the better off we’ll be.”

We have exactly two days before the patients are in charge of the asylum. Mike Allen of Politico has Issa’s little list. It seems like we’re about reading to return to the McCarthy era.

Issa’s list: “1. Impact of regulation on job creation … 2. Fannie/Freddie & the Foreclosure Crisis … 3. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the failure to identify origins of the financial crisis … 4. Combating corruption in Afghanistan … 5. WikiLeaks … 6. FDA/Food & Drug Safety.”

Regulation’s impact on job creation?  Why the Financial Crisis Committee can’t agree?  Why doesn’t he just create a panel called ‘Bircher Memes We love and Wish to cram down the public’s throat on their dime’ ?

If you want my conspiracy theory it’s that the Republicans are trying to create an atmosphere by which we do take a hit on the National Credit Score.  That’s going to lead to a call to wreck Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  They’re manufacturing a crisis and we have a cave-in leader.   The bond market problems won’t be a result of problems because we don’t have the ability to honor our debt or print more money.  It will be because the rest of the world is going to start thinking that we’re going to default because of ideologues intent on crashing the economy and defaulting.  Plus, they have enough evidence-to-date that our economics-ignorant President will most likely go along with it.  Even Lindsay Graham joined the lalala-fingers-in-ears Republicans who wish to shut down all rational debate.  If this is any indication of what will go on in two years, then Obama should be re-elected easily. What rational American would vote for a group of people intent on ruining the country?

Sometime in the next few months, the U.S. will reach its debt limit and Congress will, once again, have a choice: Raise the limit or let the U.S. default on its obligations. For a while now, Tea Party Republicans like Senator Mike Lee, who unseated the insufficiently conservative Robert Bennett in Utah, have been threatening to vote against the debt ceiling increase unless they win substantial reductions in government spending. Idle threats about refusing to raise the debt ceiling are nothing new, but the Tea Party crowd seems quite serious about it–in part because they’ve promised their base they’re going to do it.

This kind of thing–willfully refusing to pay our bills–is what throws individuals in jail. It’s called FRAUD.  These guys empowered Bush and his war spending spree as well as providing irrational tax cuts for the entire decade.  Now they want to play a dine and dash on the bill?

As many others have noted, the demand of going back to 2008 spending levels is radical and, not coincidentally, highly unrealistic: According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, it’d amount to a one-fifth cut in discretionary spending–forcing cuts that could damage the fragile recovery and starve programs like Pell Grants that most Americans value.

And the alternative—failing to increase the debt ceiling? What precise effects would that have? This isn’t my area of expertise, but my colleague Alex Hart knows a thing or two about it. Here’s what he wrote last week:

Recent history provides a sense of just how scary this would be. “The reason the markets calmed down [during the financial crisis] is that we took [the banks’] toxic assets and handed the financial institutions Treasurys,” says Kevin Hassett, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “If we’re in a default situation, the Treasurys themselves are the toxic assets, and it’s not clear what we can hand anybody to calm them down.”The sad thing is, Graham seems to grasp this: In the same interview, he notes that default could be catastrophic. But that’s not stopping him from making his demands. And that’s particularly disheartening, since he is supposed to be one of the more reasonable members of the Republican Senate caucus.

I can’t imagine this is what most people in the country voted for during the midterm elections.  If so, we’re in a lot bigger trouble than even I imagined and it’s time to stock up on bullets and barrels of food.  What’s worse, is we have an entire group of really insane media cheerleaders that will be egging on the revolution.  It’s just a damned shame.