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There’s not a whole lot of difference between the proposals from Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The amount of new cuts is about the same, though the Senate proposal looks bigger because it (properly) includes savings from the war drawdowns in its total savings.

But there is one other key difference which speaks to the overall Republican strategy to shackle our government so it no longer can build our infrastructure, invest in advanced research, generate green energy, alleviate poverty and educate the next generation.

The Boehner bill would only increase the debt limit for a few months, and would not allow another one without passage of an additional $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction, with no evidence that the House Republicans would include any new revenue to reach that target.

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One of the few pleasures, perverse though it be, of watching the debt-ceiling idiocy unfold has been the spectacle of the very powers who helped create the American far right—helped elect it, and contributed mightily to its ideology—pleading with the congressional Tea Party acolytes to support legislation (John Boehner’s latest effort in particular) to raise the debt ceiling. From Grover Norquist to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the guys who write those deranged Wall Street Journal editorials, the right wing’s powers-that-be have spent the past few days imploring the Tea Party congressmen, as one might a slow-witted and recalcitrant child, to realize that refusing to raise the debt ceiling, particularly now that all tax increases have been taken off the table, is a really, really bad idea.

“Boehner’s plan is the only way to bring spending down by the same amount the debt ceiling increases—without raising taxes,” Norquist, author and enforcer of the no-tax pledge, told Politico’s “Arena” column on Wednesday. (Actually, the same is true of Harry Reid’s plan, but no matter.) “It is a tremendous win for the forces of limited government.”

A similar caution was sounded by the Chamber, which contributed mightily (in dollars) to the Republicans’ congressional victory last fall. In a letter to Congress, as reported in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, Chamber Executive Vice President Bruce Josten told legislators that their vote on the Boehner plan would be one of the votes that the Chamber will use to rank members of Congress as pro- or anti-business. Nothing subtle about that. (more…)

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Ethan Rome

By Ethan Rome
Executive Director, Health Care for America Now!

Tuesday Meghan McCarthy wrote a story in the National Journal that asked, “Are GOP Leaders Going Soft on ‘Obamacare?’” “Top tea partiers in Congress,” she wrote, “openly worry about the commitment to defund the health care law.”

Soft on “Obamacare.” That’s not exactly how I would term it. These tea party folks clearly have high standards for vigorous opposition. After all, in their brief time under the far-right leadership of Speaker John Boehner, the Republicans in the U.S. House have voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, defund it and eliminate all funding for life-saving health care services for women. They’ve launched several senseless investigations, and they obsessively and almost psychotically trash the new health care law using any microphone they can get near. When it comes to getting rid of “Obamacare,” I’d say Speaker Boehner appears to be giving it his all.

But for “top tea partiers” like Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), that’s not good enough. According to McCarthy, they’ve been “leading an effort to strip an estimated $105 billion in mandatory funding from the statute,” but Bachmann “fears that the Republican leadership will try to placate the conservative base with empty gestures that leave the funding in place.”

Talking about her Republican leaders in advance of Tuesday’s budget extension vote, Bachmann explained: “I think there’s going to be a fake appeasement with the Planned Parenthood thing and a fake appeasement with the ‘Obamacare’ thing.” (more…)

By Robert L. Borosage
Co-Director Campaign for America’s Future

Washington is afflicted with its own version of March Madness, and we’re not talking college basketball. Call it a severe case of attention disorder. Washington has forgotten that 25 million Americans remain in need of full-time work — a human calamity and national emergency.

When the Campaign for America’s Future (which I help direct) convenes its Jobs Summit on March 10 to address what to do about jobs, it will have to pierce through a bipartisan clamor about cutting spending.

“The American people want the government to stay open and they want us to cut spending” House Speaker John Boehner trumpets, apparently forgetting that he just campaigned across the country bellowing “Where are the jobs?” In Washington, the argument is about less — how much and what to cut. And if cutting spending costs jobs, the speaker tells us “so be it.”

But So Be It economics is both bad policy and bad politics. It ignores the human casualties of mass unemployment, threatens already faltering growth, scorns the broad consensus of economists, and offends the priorities of voters.

Americans have been consistently clear about what they want from Washington. Sure they don’t like deficits and think government wastes their money, but, again and again, most recently in last week’s NBC/WSJ poll, they tell Washington to focus on jobs and the economy. Nothing else comes close. (more…)

By Ethan Rome
Executive Director, Health Care for America Now!

During the health care debate in 2009 and 2010, a serious issue emerged — the number of pages in congressional bills. I’m not kidding. The Republicans wanted short bills, and the health care reform bill was way, way too long (proving that it did too much and would end civilization as we know it). There was outrage across the country. Angry opponents of reform went to congressional town hall meetings brandishing huge stacks of paper. Then Minority Leader Boehner, foreshadowing his leadership priorities today, used a nationally televised address to condemn the length of the health care bill three times in as many minutes.

The extremists went wild. Rumors swept across the land. Some Tea Party types claimed the bill was 10,000 pages. Slate called the explosive stack-of-paper obsession “peculiar.” Ultimately, the New York Times set the record straight: “In the original version,” the Times said, “H.R. 3590 as passed by the Senate on Dec. 24, 2009, ran to some 2,400 pages, although with a very large font, triple spacing and huge left and right margins.” The newspaper went on to explain that, “With normal margins the document probably would shrink to about 500 pages or so.” Which meant the bill was not really that long when compared to other major bills, such as the financial reform law and past budget deals.

In the November mid-term elections, the Republicans ran on a platform of change, and change is what we got. Not only will the House Republicans vote to repeal the new health care law this week, they’re going to do so with a bill that’s only two pages long.

This is a triumph of conciseness, a 247-word beacon of brevity. The low word-count works especially well for the GOP, given the party’s unfinished “repeal and replace” campaign pledge. The Republicans addressed repeal, but they haven’t quite gotten to the “replace” part. That, we’re told, is a work in progress, and the question is being referred to various House committees to kick around for months.

In Sunday’s Washington Post, reporter Amy Goldstein noted that the Republican repeal vote is “the prelude to a two-pronged strategy that is likely to last throughout the year, or longer.” Great. Just what we need — another interminable debate on health care when the Republicans ought to be focusing on bipartisan solutions to create jobs. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the new House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, said it “may take time” for the GOP to develop a health care plan. Upton, who has been in Congress since 1987, has had only 24 years to come up with some health care ideas of his own. Instead, he hired Julie Goon, the former top lobbyist for the health insurance industry’s biggest trade group, as his special adviser.

I’m not sure what the Republican “replace” plan is (or how many pages it will be), but I know their two-page repeal bill is a bad deal for America’s families, seniors and small businesses.

The Republican repeal bill will take away dozens of benefits and important consumer protections that are making a real difference in peoples’ lives right now. When the Republicans vote for repeal, they’ll be taking away people’s newly won freedom from fear of insurers denying their care, dropping them when their sick and imposing double-digit premium hikes with impunity. They’ll be booting young adults off their parents’ health plans. They’ll be telling seniors they have to pay back the $250 donut hole checks they received to help buy prescription medications and give up their new 50% discount on brand-name drugs. The Republican repeal plan will force nearly 900,000 American families a year into bankruptcy because of huge medical bills. And it will take job-creating tax credits away from small businesses.
Speaker John Boehner and the Republicans don’t want the public to know the truth about the Affordable Care Act and what their repeal plan will take away from America’s consumers. And you can bet the debate about repeal will be filled with misleading information from Boehner and the new Republican majority. To help folks see beyond the rhetoric, Health Care for America Now made a chart that tells the truth. You can read and download a printable, high-resolution version with citations here and below.

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Ethan Rome served as deputy campaign manager in HCAN’s 2009 successful campaign to win comprehensive health care reform. He has been a grassroots organizer, political activist, and strategic communicator for progressive issue and electoral campaigns for more than 20 years. From 2002until 2009, Mr. Rome directed public affairs for the 1.6 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). He managed national communications and media relations for International President Gerald W. McEntee and the union’s priority organizing, legislative and political campaigns. Prior to joining AFSCME in 1999, Rome was chief policy and political adviser to the speaker of the Connecticut House.

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Follow Ethan Rome on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@HCAN

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This piece was first published on The Huffington Post

Zach Carter
Economics Editor, AlterNet; Fellow, Campaign for America’s Future

I didn’t expect to see serious economic policy discussions in the “Republican Pledge To America,” but even by Washington, D.C. standards, this document is staggeringly disingenuous. Not once in the entire 48-page screed do Republicans mention the words “Wall Street,” “subprime,” or “foreclosure.” It’s a deliberate effort to obscure the fact that today’s economic mess is the direct result of financial malpractice on Wall Street — and that Republican economic policies would encourage more of it.

As my CAF colleague Richad Eskow has noted, this Pact to Rob The Middle Class has plenty of other problems — but fundamentally, it’s supposed to be a discussion about government spending and the federal budget deficit. For anyone to even pretend to discuss those issues without mentioning the past decade’s Wall Street excess is simply laughable. The increases in government spending under President Barack Obama have been an attempt to counter economic damage wreaked by Wall Street under President George W. Bush. They haven’t been enough, but they’ve helped — just ask economist Mark Zandi, former adviser to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign (.pdf file).

But after watching a deregulated Wall Street pump out trillions of dollars worth of ridiculous predatory mortgages and then amplify their bets tenfold in the unregulated derivatives market, Republicans now promise to hold up any new government regulation that “costs” the economy more than $100 million.

This is pure insanity. Any serious Wall Street regulation will cost every megabank far more than $100 million over the 10-year span devoted to budget projections — that’s the whole point of serious financial regulation. Republicans are defending the basic housing bubble accounting scam: book huge, illusory short-term profits with reckless lending and gambling– when those bets blow up, stick taxpayers with the bill. You can measure the short-term costs to bank profitability, but you can’t measure the costs of future financial collapse. Plenty of free-market activists thought decades of deregulation had worked until markets cratered in 2008. At that point, we lost eight million jobs, and the amount of government debt held by the private sector increased by 40 percent of GDP. Without Obama’s stimulus package, the cost in jobs would have been far higher. (more…)