Members of Congress have have been the authors of some of the great acts of cynicism in our lifetimes: slipping items favored by special interests in the fine print of conference committee reports; voting one way on a bill and thenanother way in enabling legislation or appropriations; citing some high-minded purpose on a bill that is just an excuse for letting or worse causing people die. Mitch McConnell, the invisi-lipped Republican leader in the Senate, achieved a kind of a milestone this week during the budget limit negotiations. Failing to achieve a compromise (so far) that would include raising taxes as a way to reduce the debt, McConnell suggested a fall-back position that would allow the president to raise the debt ceiling over the next year, subject to three votes of disapproval by the Congress. Okay, this does raise the debt limit that would allow to keep the government functioning. It saddles President Obama with all the responsibility for the increased debt, without causing the Republicans to accept any themselves. In short, the Democrats will have to take responsibility by themselves for cleaning up a mess they did not by themselves create, while shouldering all the blame, but while denying them their preferred tool.
McConnell explained his thinking on the Laura Ingraham radio show: “(Democrats) want to blame the economy on us and the reason default is no better an idea today than when Newt Gingrich tried it in 1995 is that it destroys your brand. It would give the president an opportunity to blame Republicans for a bad economy. Look, he owns the economy. He’s been in office almost three years now, and we refuse to let him entice us into co-ownership of a bad economy.”
These guys don’t want to lead, and they certainly don’t want to solve; they just want to be in office, and we saw what a fine mess George W. Bush made of things when he was in charge. And what, pray tell, is the Republican brand that McConnell so badly wants to defend? What does it stand for? War? Debt? Irregulation? Privileges for special interests? Rolling back the New Deal?
Work the problem, people, work the problem.