The Republican Problem: Reality
Having made all sorts of promises, some specious, some serious, the GOP is finally on the clock. It has to do something rather than object. First up, apart from the ridiculous reading of the constitution on the floor of the House, is a move to repeal the health care reform passed so agonizingly last year. Nothing of much substance will come of all this huffing and puffing since any repeal won’t get far in the Senate, but the GOP hopes to look good in front of its more rabid supporters and stir up trouble for Obama.
The problem is that health care reform, as I ranted on about at the time, is all about cost saving. Health care, apart from defense spending, is our one big budget buster over the next few years, and sensible government action is the only viable hope to reduce that budget burden. Which is what the reform, however flawed, does.
This means the GOP has a bit of a problem.
On the one hand they continue to moan about the budget deficit. On the other hand they want to repeal one of the more plausible ways we have for reducing that deficit. This dilemma was brought into sharp focus yesterday by the Congressional Budget Office, the non-partisan financial watchdog for Congress. The GOP had asked the CBO to opine on the benefits of repeal. The CBO responded by saying that there aren’t any. Further, according to the CBO, the GOP repeal act, provocatively called H.R.2 “Repealing the Job Killing Health Care Law Act”, will raise the Federal deficit, not reduce it.
Whoops.
This is what happens when facts meet opinion.
The reform was designed so as to cut the long term budget. The CBO said at the time that it was successful in that aim. So why the GOP thought that the CBO would suddenly change its mind I have no idea. Perhaps bravado addled their brains. Naturally this rebuff was met with bluster and stutter. John “The Ever Tanned” Boehner, our new Speaker of the House, muttered something about the CBO being entitled to their opinion, and how they were hobbled in their analysis by the 1970’s law establishing the rules within which they have to work. Rules like staying within existing legislation, and being non-partisan. Nasty that. Having to be objective and balanced. Especially when the result is not what you want to hear.
It’s odd that the GOP even went down this road. They knew what the answer would be. Perhaps they want to discredit the CBO ahead of more tricky questions like those surrounding the impact of tax cuts on the deficit. The CBO has been notorious for arguing that if you reduce revenues and not spending then the deficit will go up. That sounds eminently sensible. Since that is also unacceptable in the GOP alternative universe where tax cuts reduce rather than increase deficits, as in supply side economics, it makes political sense to destroy the credibility of any organization who might dare speak up. Even if that organization is specifically set up to be the neutral scorekeeper for Congress. Neutrality is a nuisance for crusaders whose aims contradict their own stated goals. Thus the GOP is firing off a pre-emptive strike against good sense and reason. I suppose this is better than the Bush era when no one bothered to deal with the truth if it got in the way at all.
In any case I expect the Republicans to thunder onward and make more fools of themselves.
They already have bent their own budget rules to make sure no one counts tax cuts as a deficit creating issue. Apparently only spending is a cause of a deficit. Cutting income isn’t. There are plenty of unemployed people who wish they could use that kind of accounting before their homes are foreclosed on. Only in the alternative universe does funny accounting substitute for reality.
After two years of merely saying “no” and whipping up the passions of their oddball supporters, who genuinely believe in funny accounting, the GOP has met its match. No not Obama, he’s as inept as ever. No. The true enemy of the GOP crusade to role back history and reconstitute the 1800’s in the here and now is none other than that nasty concept: reality.
Sit back this will be fun.
