Health & Fitness
Country Last: Three Years of GOP Brinksmanship Hurts Us All
Written by Kim Crumb
Two years ago we had a “supercommittee,” that was supposed to find a bipartisan approach to deficit reduction. Instead we got the Sequester after the Republican dominated House refused to do anything in the face of what were supposed to be deliberately unthinkable and irresponsible cuts. Next? The “McConnell plan,” a way for Congress to raise the government’s debt limit without actually voting to do so. This year, the same people proposed the “no budget, no pay” act, a measure that, coupled with the last debt ceiling increase, was supposed to deny paychecks to lawmakers if they did not pass a budget. Just this week, the GOP once again shut down the government just like they did in 1995.
For three years Republicans in Congress have relied on these tactical maneuvers, sleights-of-hand and brazen gimmickry to lurch from one crisis to the next. Time and time again we see the House waste time with empty-gesture votes, designed only for politics and not in the spirit of doing the hard work of legislating. Even some Republicans seem to agree. “Certainly we’ve often used insider Washington rules and tools -- some would call them gimmicks -- to protect people from hard votes,” said Representative Mick Mulvaney, Republican of South Carolina. “That’s been part of Washington a long time. But what we’re seeing here is an unwillingness to accept this [compromise] as a first step. You can’t start with a complete surrender [on Obama’s part]”
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This brinksmanship has real costs and has even detracted from Republican aims. Oversight of the ACA (aka ObamaRomneyCare) is undermined by blind partisanship. A burdensome and out-dated tax code remains unchanged. And legislative efforts to support those who’ve been abused by globalization and economic catastrophes, the 90% of America that only earns 50% of national income, is stifled. This is so pointlessly self-destructive that even the conservative Wall Street Journal has started likening the House GOP to Japanese kamikaze pilots.
When will citizens hold them to account for this devastating chicanery? Please call, write, fax, email or tweet your Congressman and tell them you expect them to put our country first and do the hard work of governing, to accept that the Affordable Care Act is here to stay and pass a budget. Tell them that you're out of patience with divisive political gamesmanship, and that you are watching whether their actions will improve the Common Good! That's what our Founding Fathers expected of us and its time we meet those expectations.