One of the important lessons Americans should have learned over the past
six-and-a-half years is that when the voters elected an African
American man as President, Republicans wholly embraced governing by
crises. A person from outside of America may believe that Americans want
government by crisis, but recent
polling
reveals that is not the case. It is particularly true when a Republican
budget crisis is driven by religion to deny low-income women access to
cancer screenings and reproductive health services. By now, most
Americans are aware that Republicans could not possibly care less that
even their supporters do not want a manufactured crisis to threaten a
government shutdown, or that their resolve to maintain harsh austerity
in their precious sequester will devastate hundreds-of-thousands of
Americans’ jobs and thwart economic growth and continued recovery.
President Obama has pleaded, cajoled, and attempted
to shame Republicans into sitting down and negotiating spending
legislation for the next fiscal year before the October 1st deadline,
but that would put a damper on the ‘govern by crisis’ plans favored by
Republicans. What is surprising in a way is that there are Republicans
who agree with President Obama that the time for negotiating a
bipartisan budget that corrects the Republican cabal sequestration disaster is at
hand, but they are beholden to McConnell
and his bosses Cruz and Lee whose only religious bona
fides are on the line. While Republicans in the House and Senate are
driving the shutdown crisis and rejecting any proposal to negotiate a
way out of the sequester, the Congressional Budget Office released a
damning report about the economic tragedy of keeping sequestration cuts
in place.
It was never reported by mainstream media, but a couple of weeks ago the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) formally
announced,
and warned Republicans that their promised failure to provide relief
from automatically triggered cuts to critical national priorities would
lead to 800,000 fewer jobs and 0.6% less economic growth; the CBO
parroted President Obama, most Democrats, and a few semi-sane
Republicans and recommended a bipartisan budget agreement to provide
responsible relief from sequestration.
Specifically, the CBO determined that maintaining
sequester-level cuts would lead to 500,000 fewer jobs and 0.4% less
growth in 2016, and 300,000 fewer jobs and 0.2% less growth in 2017. For
Koch Republicans, the idea of killing 800,000 Americans’ jobs and
retarding America’s world-leading economic growth while an African
American man is in the White House is just business as usual and a way
to slow down the President’s economic success.
One of the biggest obstacles to getting a budget
deal finished by the October 1st deadline besides the religious right’s
demand that poor women be denied reproductive health services and cancer
screenings through Planned Parenthood is Republican leaders demanding
sequestration level cuts stay in place while military spending is
increased. It is true the religious defunding crusade is a great help
for Republicans intent on governing from crisis to crisis with shutting
down the government as their primary bargaining chip, but the Republican cabal
leadership’s demand to keep sequester level domestic cuts in place is
why there have been no negotiations to date.
In fact, the theocracy issue aside, the biggest
obstacle, and why there have been no negotiations, is that Democrats
insist that any increases in defense spending be matched dollar for
dollar with increases in non-defense domestic programs. Republicans
naturally want much, much, much more spending on the military paid for
with many, many more cuts to domestic spending. Up to today, McConnell is never going to allow any negotiations to change sequester
spending levels because he still claims the Budget Control Act, the
Sequester, was the Republican cabal’s greatest accomplishment in the past five years
despite the damage it wrought on economic growth, job creation, and
general welfare of the American people.
There are very few in government who believe the
sequester was a beneficial crisis, and there are Republicans who agree
with the President that the time to fix the sequester is long past. In
fact, one Republican senator
admitted
that not all Republicans are crisis-oriented or willing to deliberately
kill jobs and hamper economic growth. The anonymous Senate Republicans
said, “
A few of us have suggested that we should start talks and get something going with Democrats, but Mitch has been very consistent.” It is likely that McConnell is not enamored with the prospect of angering the real Senate and House leader Cruz.
Last month,
according to Dent (R-Penn), several senior members of the “
House
Appropriations Committee, including the panel’s chairman, Rogers (R-KY) took a chance and actually told the
Republican leadership that the time to negotiate a way out of the
impasse is now, not in the shadow of the papal visit or a government
shutdown Oct. 1.”
Like President Obama and a few Republicans,
Democrats have also called for bipartisan budget negotiations to avoid a
crisis including Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid. Reid laid out who
is standing in the way of both avoiding a government shutdown and
saving 800,000 jobs and economic growth. Reid
parroted something that is a persistent issue when Republicans have a say in governing, “
there is no good reason to wait until the last minute. We’ve known for months that government funding runs out on Oct. 1. Senate
Democrats have been calling on Republicans for months – both publicly
and privately – to sit down with us and work out a bipartisan path so
that we can avoid another shutdown. So far, we’ve been met with nothing
but silence. I say to my Republican colleagues, let’s get started –
there is no good reason to wait until the last minute.” Bernie Sanders actually went along with President Obama and
said, “
We
must end sequestration now ahead of the end of the fiscal year and
prevent a budget showdown that will help nobody. It makes no sense to
head towards a crisis when we have a clear path towards a better
solution.”
It is tragic, actually, that over the past
six-and-a-half years there have been clear paths toward better solutions
than heading to another senseless budget crisis, but Republicans will
not comport government without crisis unless they achieve their goals.
The current goal is maintaining sequestration-level cuts for all
domestic programs, increasing military spending, eliminating Planned
Parenthood funding, drastically slashing social safety nets and
eliminating anti-poverty programs; all demands that Democrats and
President Obama will not support. Many Americans have been led to
believe the emerging crisis is solely about Planned Parenthood funding,
and that may be somewhat true. However, at the rate Republicans love
killing Americans’ jobs and retarding economic growth that the CBO
warned is the result of not addressing sequester cuts, pundits should
consider the real impetus for the looming crisis is the Republican cabal’s rejection
of eliminating their precious sequester.
