Undoctrination.org

I know it’s about as edgy as a beach ball to criticize Boehner at this point, but asking him to act in the best interest of sincere fiscal conservatism was like having Jane Fonda give advice on how to age gracefully. 

Do you know why Democrat majorities are so tremendously successful in achieving the goals of their agenda?  It’s because even the most moderate members of their party will vote for the most extreme of them for Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader.  Our party doesn’t have any Blue Dog Democrats willing to take the heat for acting in solidarity and choosing an effective Speaker, because they’re all Blue Dog Democrats.  For all the high hopes we placed on the Tea Party Freshmen, almost without exception they’ve fallen victim to the GOP establishment and turned in their backbones after the swearing-in ceremonies.

These people have the majority in the House– the chamber from which all bills are supposed to originate, the one with the most opportunities to spout talking points– and look who they’re being beaten by.  They’re getting done like a hot hotel maid when Kobe Bryant is in town, and they’re taking it from the most limp-wristed, Beta male president in history.  I mean, really people?  The mom jeans wearing, underhand baseball throwing, helmet on a bike wearing, serial bower to foreign dictators?  I have a cat that singed his whiskers trying to sniff fire once (true story) and even he is less stupid than the Congressmen who are willing to bend over for Obama.

It’s been over two years since the Democrats have proposed a budget.  In spite of the 1974 law mandating that they create one annually, and in spite of the fact that they controlled a trifecta of domination in DC, they couldn’t even agree with each other enough to pass a big-spending budget.  Many of the more moderate Democrats lost their seats in 2012, there’s still quite a few who remain and would happily go along with a GOP plan if it were shown to be a compromise.  Except that there’s nothing for the GOP to compromise on,  because the cuts they’re suggesting even before drafting bills are so washed down that there’s nowhere to go from there. 

Boehner: “We’ll raise the debt ceiling for the bazillionth time this presidency, but we’ll off-set it by the same amount of cuts.”   Me: “Oh, that’s actually an okay deal.  I’ll sign off on that.”   Boehner: “Ha!  Gotcha!  The savings use the stimulus-inflated spending as a baseline, and are calculated over the course of a decade.”   Me:  “…”

We can talk all we want about “calling Obama’s bluff“, but so long as we cheer on the Balanced Budget Amendment and then offer up a budget like that, it’s not Obama whose bluff I’m worried about being called.  And c’mon, even freshly-seated Senators are only guaranteed their seats for another 5 1/2 years, why would anyone take seriously a spending plan that only starts “saving” money after the point where a brand new House, Senate, and President would have to give it the okay? 

As Senator Rand Paul said, if the deficit is bigger than the year before, and the debt is bigger than the year before, THAT IS NOT A CUT.  More on Senator Paul and his common sense later.

The jumping off point for all negotiations should be trim the budget so drastically that we spend no more than the revenue we take in, and refusal to raise the debt ceiling.  In spite of the White House talking points that some people are naive enough to believe, we can easily avoid default even if the debt ceiling is not raised.  It’s not the end of the world.  The sun won’t spontaneously explode, the seas will not turn to blood, nothing all that different from the consequences from our current debt will happen– unless it is by deliberate choice. 

Take a look at the differences between who will be paid in a shutdown, and who was paid during Clinton’s.  Clinton was a lot of things, but he was a politician first and when they’re not dirtying up my own party’s agenda, professional politicians do serve a purpose.  Clinton followed guidelines set in place since Reagan’s presidency regarding the payment of our troops during a government shutdown.  He knew that the pro-military vote was a significant one, and logic would suggest that when we’re in however many wars we’re fighting (I’ve lost track) that supporting the troops would be important now more than ever. 

Eh, not really.  Keeping from hurting the military doesn’t matter if you can keep them from voting against you.  Leading up to the 2010 election I wrote about the blatant violations of the MOVE Act, where overseas troops and their spouses were being systematically stripped of the right to vote.  You know, rights?  Those things that our men and women in war fight for?  They aren’t entitled to them, apparently.

This isn’t about being “the grown-up in the room“, it’s about playing chicken and throwing our servicemen in the trunk of the car to do it.  Obama knows that he’s in control of whether they get paid or not, and that if he chooses not to pay them, that it won’t even hurt him that badly politically.

If we can see this, then there is no way that our elected officials are unaware of the game being played.  They know what’s at stake here, but nonetheless they’re playing footsie with Obama under the table even while they pretend to talk tough.

The false dichotomy about “default or raise the ceiling” should not be accepted as the basis of any debate on the debt.  Our revenue exceeds the interest on our debt several times over, and the prioritization of other spending over paying interest on our debt is just as much a deliberate choice as the refusal to pay our troops.

A lot of people are saying that since we don’t have control of the Senate, that we need to accept that our Congressional majority isn’t significant; we should compromise and try to be more productive when we get our chance at the trifecta of DC dominance.  Except, um, that’s not an inevitability.  No one is going to flock to the polls next year unless they think there will be a meaningful outcome from giving the GOP complete control. 

While the veto power of the Executive Branch trumps the authority of the Legislative, that works to our benefit, not against us.  Even if the GOP didn’t back down and they were painted as forcing a shutdown, there’s ways to even work THAT to our political advantage.  Rand Paul’s “Shutdown Prevention Act” would ensure that spending during a shutdown is prioritized to pay current Medicare patients, Social Security recipients, and our troops AND prevent default– while only paying Congressional employees and the President at 50%.  It also disallows the funding of ObamaCare or any agencies who provide abortion.  Did I also mention that he drafted a budget which would eliminate the annual deficit in only five years? 

As much as Rand Paul makes me “giggle and heave and sigh“, another part of me gets angry because he seems to be the lone member of the GOP who both takes exception with Republican moderates and also provides an alternative.

If we’re going to negotiate, these are the terms we should be laying down in the debate.  If the Democrats aren’t going to compromise too, we should be passing the Shutdown Prevention Act in the House and forcing the Senate to give it an up or down vote. They’re going to call us extremists regardless and say that they’re trying to “save life as we know it” by going against our plans, or that we’re going to “kill Christmas“.  We might as well deserve it by going in with a plan that means business, and offering that as a jumping off point for any potential negotiations.  I’m not holding my breath, though.  The Senate Republicans are too busy calling their colleagues “Tea Party hobbits” to actually work together toward either a solution or an agenda.

We can control the narrative if we want to, and if we did that, we’d control the entire outcome of the debate.  The question is whether the House GOP wants to do that, or if they’d rather just bend over.