Cowardly Republicans Now Hiding Behind Deficit Commission

This week, Republicans swept to power by promising to cut, in the words of Indiana's Mike Pence, "runaway federal spending." But when it comes to putting taxpayers' money where their mouths are, Pence, incoming Speaker John Boehner, future Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Michele Bachmann and much of the cowardly GOP's top-brass refuse to say what budget cuts they will actually make. And now to add insult to injury, many of the leading lights of the Republican Party are waiting for recommendations from President Obama's deficit commission, a panel whose creation they opposed.

For months, Republicans have refused to "man up" to the draconian budget cuts their tough-talking campaign pledges would necessarily require. Pressed by NBC's David Gregory last month, Mike Pence could not "name the painful choice on a program that you're going to cut." Asked seven times by Chris Wallace of Fox News, failed GOP California Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina responded only, "you're asking a typical political question." Even as he touted the "GOP Pledge to America," Speaker-to-Be Boehner dodged Wallace as well:

Chris, it's time for us as Americans to have an adult conversation with each other about the serious challenges our country faces. And we can't have that serious conversation until we lay out the size of the problem. Once Americans understand how big the problem is, then we can begin to talk about potential solutions...

Let's not get to the potential solutions. Let's make sure Americans understand how big the problem is. Then we can talk about possible solutions and then work ourselves into those solutions that are doable.

That charade has only continued since the election. Within 24 hours, Cantor, Bachmann and Tennessee's Marsha Blackburn all did the duck-and-cover on spending cuts. With defense, Social Security and Medicare (not to mention interest on the national debt) off the table, the unexplained GOP pledge to cut $100 billion in "discretionary" spending would necessarily gut the departments of Education, Transportation, Interior, Commerce and Energy by more than 20%.

And as was on display on Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN last night, the comic cowardice of the ersatz Republican spending hawks has gone from the ridiculous to the sublime. Refusing to reveal what Boehner described as "lot of tricks up our sleeves in terms of how we can dent this," Republicans are now saying they will wait for President Obama's deficit commission to weigh in.

http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/002016.htm

Every time I look at the WH all I see is the word "Friskies".

And it doesn't.

Okay, besides the fact that it was the Obama administration that put together the Deficit Commission, get a load of this:

The commission blew its legally-mandated deadline, and never issued a final report. In fact, none of the proposals it considered garnered the necessary votes from every member of the commission to qualify as a "recommendation." That hasn't stopped the conventional wisdom from coalescing around a few of the proposals the commission considered, and pretending that these were the "recommendations" of the "bipartisan" "commission."

Now that the commission has provided the necessary political cover, anyone who notices the facts of the second paragraph is dismissed as some kind of beady-eyed nit-picker who's just trying to spoil the party for everyone else. In fact, such people are airily dismissed as Not Serious About Reducing the Deficit, and there's nothing worse than that!

We'll soon be moving on to the next phase, which is consideration of various "recommendations" that oddly enough land disproportionately on the poorer members of society. Among these will be cutting social security benefits for future retirees and raising the retirement age. "Recommendations" that will be deprived of any oxygen at all will include raising the tax rate on income above a quarter million dollars a year or bringing the tax rate for capital gains up to match the rate for income. It will also be forbidden to speak of lifting or eliminating the lid on earnings subject to social security withholding or treating the income of financial managers as income rather than as capital gains.

Are you laughing your ass off yet? Because it's going to be soooo funny!