The House Republicans are contemplating a new budget-hostage strategy, the the Washington Post reports in a story that is both highly useful and inadvertently Onion-esque. The hallmark of Onion news reporting is conveying insanity as if it were sane in a completely deadpan way. The news contained within the story is that the House GOP is thinking of tying the next increase in the debt ceiling to tax reform. Under this proposed strategy, the Post reports, âThe debt limit might be raised for only a few months, with the promise of another increase when tax reform legislation passes the Senate.â
By tax reform, they mean cutting taxes…
NR
I eagerly await another offer to cut Social Security from Obama.
MattF
The new House Freshman class needs to be able to claim that they’re just as capable of creating catastrophes as their peers. And no, unfortunately, that’s not snark.
Hunter Gathers
In Capitalist America, taxes cut you!
gene108
Let’s default on our debt. Screw it.
They’ll blame Obama and Democrats no matter what. It doesn’t matter.
They want economic ruin. I say: Bring It On.
Also, too one of the first things I’d stop funding to meet our debt obligations are any and all money paid to Congresscritters and their staffs. Let them get furloughed.
Zifnab
@NR: Obama’s offers don’t matter much in a Congress that rejects every offer out of hand.
At this point, it looks like another four years of gridlock.
ranchandsyrup
WAs told with a straight face this morning that AEI is a leftist think tank because they said that the Kenyusurper has done enough re: debt/deficit.
ETA: RIP Eazy E. Nobody move, nobody get hurt.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
When have they ever detailed wtf “tax reform” is? Rmoney prattled on about it but in vague generalities as was becoming an empty suit Republican presidential candidate.
I assume the House Repups are also not forthcoming with particulars.
rikyrah
let’s go, Mofos.
let’s go.
They have been committing ECONOMIC TREASON AGAINST THIS COUNTRY.
E-C-O-N-O-M-I-C T-R-E-A-S-O-N
Mino
@Zifnab: Shit! We’ll be very lucky to achieve gridlock with the actors we have.
Violet
@gene108:
This should be law. When Congress can’t agree how to deal with the debt, they and their staff don’t get paid. It should also include stopping of all benefits, including health benefits. Let them enjoy the free market in health insurance of which they speak so highly.
Redshirt
Is there a single Democrat out there that actively questions the patriotism of the Republican party? That gets on CNN or the Sunday morning shows and questions the Republicans motivations? One?
Joe Buck
Stop proposing as a remedy that Congress and its staff should not be paid. Many of them are independently wealthy and don’t care, and others are biding their time waiting to switch to the lobbying-corporate complex and make far more. Those members who are neither independently wealthy nor who are greasing the skids for a huge pay boost are more likely to be progressive. So you are only helping the Republicans win with such proposals.
Besides, the debt is far less of a problem currently than unemployment is.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@rikyrah:
Their economic treason will simply continue to get more and more overt until such time as the MSM (and the not very attentive white people who get most of their news via those channels) deign to start calling it what it is.
In other words, the depths to which we will sink are limited only by venality of the MSM and the bovine stupidity of their audience.
And will that cheerful thought, everybody have a nice day!
The Moar You Know
This “minority party being able to bring the entire process of government to a grinding halt” thing isn’t working so well.
BD of MN
@Violet: The Senate has a median net worth of over $2.5M, and the House has a median net worth of over $850k, so these threats aren’t too terribly effective…
The Moar You Know
@NR: The GOP rejected that as well.
MikeJ
@The Moar You Know:
They’re the majority in the House.
Johnnybuck
@The Moar You Know:
Predictably, if I may add
Violet
@BD of MN: Their staffers don’t, though. Shut down their staffers incomes and health insurance and the Congress member might think twice about it. They have to look at those people every day. “Oh, hey, Bob. Sorry about taking away health insurance from your wife who has cancer.” That’s not an easy conversation.
Our Congressional representatives don’t see the people their decisions impact. They and their staffers should be the first impacted so as to make that obvious to them.
Calouste
@Violet:
We’re talking about Republican House members here. Saying that is as easy for them as ordering a pizza.
jl
One silver lining is that it may be a signal that, all the way to the midterms, the GOP intends to be the batshit insane dry drunk bad-faith daddy running around the house waving a shot gun yelling that he needs the kids’ milk money RIGHT NOW or something bad might happen.
If the Dems can find a consistent response to that behavior and bring it to the average person’s attention (big if, I know), the majority of sane voters might realize that they can do something on midterm election day, and go do it.
Violet
@Calouste: I know they do that all the time. They don’t do it to their staffers that they have to see every day. I think that would be harder for them.
SatanicPanic
@Violet: Wasn’t there some aide to a Republican candidate for President who had to hold a fundraiser because his wife had cancer? Damn I am drawing a blank.
Steeplejack
@SatanicPanic:
Hell, Ron Paul’s campaign manager died uninsured.
Violet
@SatanicPanic: Don’t remember that. Someone should highlight it, if so.
SatanicPanic
@Steeplejack: That’s it. Damn I am feeling dumb lately.
gene108
@jl:
Even if the Dems had a good response, they’d be drowned out by the right-wing noise machine.
See what happened with the sequestration cuts. Republicans, Fox News, Limbaugh, et. al. start squawking in unison, in January, that sequestration was/is Obama’s idea and they had nothing to do with it.
Repeat it enough times and people will decide it has to be true because the right-wing megaphone drowns out the “debt-ceiling hostage takers” response.
TriassicSands
That’s the hallmark of Onion news? It sounds exactly like what the MSM has been doing for years.
TriassicSands
Fixed.
Soonergrunt
These people have a tenuous connection to the real world at best.
Keith G
@Zifnab:
Then he needs to do things like veto the air traffic controller fix.
Inch by inch the GOP is adjusting the field of play in ways that favor them. He plays the good guy, while they play the I-don’t-give-a-shit guy. There is going to have to be a come to Jesus moment where important values are defended by an urgent struggle.
feebog
I’m now convinced that the only way we get these morons out of office is to let them go ahead with their threat and default on the debt. Obama should just say, no negotiations, you already approved this spending, now raise the debt ceiling or be prepared to accept the consequences.
PhoenixRising
@gene108:
Yeah, probably. But I thought the reason we had to re-elect Mr My Name Is Never Appearing On Another Ballot to the WH was so that he could test that hypothesis.
By vetoing this kind of stupid policy/stupid politics combo plate. Then holding a press conference, pointing out that kids who need the free breakfast at Head Start aren’t whining about a 2 hour delay of their juice boxes, they’re being tough minded about spending.
jl
@gene108:
Given the plunging polls for Senators (in their non-gerrymandered historical districts) who opposed any gun control legislation, we will have a nice test of your hypothesis in the midterms.
Once in awhile public opinion turns. If the GOP has anything other than the long con they have been trying to pull since Nixon, I have yet to see it. Once that con runs out, all their propaganda won’t make any difference.
One of the reason a lot of the New Deal legislation passed was the most of the GOP Congresscirtters realized nothing could help them against public opinion and they had to join up or lose their seats. It could happen again. A lot of the media was just as bad back then, and much weaker voting rights protections.
NotMax
Why do I half-expect someone to insert into appropriations for the executive a clause along the lines of “this funding shall not be used for any purposes, work or disbursement by the President or Vice-president, or by their staff or the White House in any capacity, on Tuesdays, Thursdays nor additionally on any date with a three in it” any day now?
Dr. Mantis Toboggan
How is this plan worse than president Obama’s plan to cut Social Security in exchange for deficit-cutting?
gene108
@PhoenixRising: @jl:
I’m just of the opinion that the GOP has no reason to change. The Democrats don’t have the media firepower to bring them down. The GOP has to implode under their own incompetence.
I don’t see Democrats being able to demonize Republican leadership, the way Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton have been demonized for Democratic office holders over the years. There’s not a lot Democrats can do to force Republicans in office to run to the left.
No matter how good a response the Dems have, it’ll not be enough to make Republicans scared to align with the Republican leadership.
As long as Republicans have about 20-25 safe states for Presidential races, the Senate leadership has a stranglehold on a few red states and the House has been gerrymandered for Republican benefit.
They still are looking at the same electoral map Bush, Jr. managed to finagle his way around by reducing it to a couple of battleground states.
There’s no reason for Senators from Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, etc. to moderate.
The Constitution gives disproportionate representation to rural constituencies. Those districts tend to go Republican now, so they have a structural advantage in the House, on-top of the 2010 gerrymandering that gives them an insurance policy.
Unless there’s a GOP lead clusterfuck like Iraq, there’s no reason to think you can make inroads into beating them electorally.
They have for the most part conceded the Northeast and West Coast, but their hold in the other parts of the country seems strong enough to keep them from becoming a permanent minority party or out of power in the White House for too much longer.
kindness
Re: Republican battle taxes.
Subject: Doesn’t matter. Any battle will do.
Action: Republicans crash & burn the republic to get their way.
Media reaction: The Principled Republicans are holding out and fighting for the fairness their supporters demand.
Liberals: Huh? What the?!?
burnspbesq
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
The principal goal of Republican tax reformers, to the extent they have any agenda that speaks to actual tax policy questions, is to reduce corporate income taxes, preferably by going to a territorial system that will be child’s play for people like me to show our clients how to game.
A secondary goal is to “simplify” and “unify the tax treatment of partnerships and S corporations; in plain English that means they want to allow S corporation shareholders to play all the fun timing and character games that partners can play.
To call it a dog’s breakfast would insult both dogs and dog food manufacturers.
El Cruzado
Wrong, they mean cutting taxes for rich people.
Joel
I used to roll up, this is a hold up
Ain’t nothing funny, stop smiling
Don’t nothing move but the money
Lurking Canadian
@burnspbesq: They also talk a lot about “widening the tax base” so “everybody has skin in the game”, by which they mean “the wealthy are paying too large a share of tax revenue. They should pay less and poor people should pay more.”
liberal
@Joe Buck:
Yep.
In fact, given their relative power, Congressional salaries should be jacked up significantly, and the most draconian penalties possible for all the grifting should accompany that.
liberal
@Lurking Canadian:
Absolutely. Starting with getting rid of schedule D: income is income is income.
TriassicSands
Up the page, I added the words “on the wealthy” to this statement for the sake of accuracy. However, I think to be completely accurate, it is worth noting that the GOP’s obsession with tax cuts probably doesn’t apply to the mid/lower middle class, lower class, and poor. I’d be willing to bet the GOP would raise taxes on everyone but the well-off, if they thought they could get away with it. (The upper middle class may earn enough to be exempt from this.)
Doc Stankus
@TriassicSands:
A good chunk of the upper middle class do actually pay higher income tax rates than the wealthy.
The average making $100k a year is likely paying a higher tax rate than someone making $10 million. It’s likely mostly salary, albeit well paid. Not as much ability to structure to minimize taxes.
Why they are more likely to vote to for the party that most wants to screw them as a bulwark against poors remains a question of much conjecture.
TenguPhule
We need to cut Republican Rep Heads off from their bodies.
Its the only way they’ll learn.