The Republican’s, having given up small points like minimal tax increases for the top 1%  think hay have avoided being stigmatized by the rest of us for allowing us to avoid the fiscal cliff, so they are now making big noises about how they will get even at debt limit time. Many, like the mentally deprived Senator John Cornyn of Texas, think it would be a good idea to shut down the government over this, but as the Wall Street Journal, not exactly a liberal paper, stated, “You don’t take hostages unless you are ready to shoot them.” Does the Senator from Texas really want to shoot the country? Maybe Cornyn’s one of those Texans who wants to secede. Certainly the country would be a lot better without him or his state.

 

Mitch McConnell on This Week, states that we have to negotiate now, before the deadlines come up or our next fiscal problems will overcome us. Great idea Mitch, you’re the Senate minority leader, get with it.

 

He says over and over that our biggest problem is the debt ceiling but that’s just dead wrong. It’s jobs and anyone who is out of work or knows anyone who is out of work knows that.

 

He talks about how he wants the president to lead in the negotiations. He says, “We elected the President to be the President.” But he didn’t elect the President. In fact he did everything he could to keep that from happening. This is the man who four years ago said that his only job was to keep Obama from being reelected. Well it happened so I guess that Mitch really has no job any longer. Maybe he should just quit before Ashley Judd disgraces him in the next election.  But he won’t, he’ll keep at it; anyone who thinks that Mc Connell has changed his outlook is too dumb for Reality TV. This is a guy who would have sold his kids into slavery to get rid of Obama and that’s still all he really cares about, not the economy, not jobs and certainly not the debt ceiling.

 

But now that Obama has won again, maybe it’s time for McConnell to get off his white middle-aged ass and try to do something right for the country

 

He uses that old bull about our debt making us look like Greece. He’s obviously never been to Greece and his parallel is so ludicrous that it shows him up as the fool he is. The reality is that the Republicans don’t get that our problem is not debt buy jobs and if we create jobs the taxes from that employment will be a major factor in reducing our debt.

 

That won’t happen alone. We must also make our government and all its agencies more efficient, That doesn’t mean we have to cut programs the way the right wants, it means  we have to make them more efficient. There is far too much waste in all our processes. It’s unfortunate that a man who holds such a significant position in our government doesn’t get it.

 

McConnell says that the tax debate is over but it hasn’t really begun. There are still so many loopholes in the seven thousand page tax code that we have to redo the whole thing and start from scratch with a shorter, fairer model.

 

McConnell’s statement belies his and his Republican partners position in the just finished budget fight. They claimed that one of their principle objectives was to eliminate loopholes in the tax code rather than raise taxes. Of course they never named those loopholes and now that that fight is temporarily over they are proving that they never had any interest in removing any loopholes at all.  McConnell’s new position that taxes are now off the table already shows that they have no interest in any kind of real negotiation but only want to pose and bluster for their base.

 

The Republican’s claim that we spend too much, but how much is too much? Do we let children die for lack of medical care, do we let them go uneducated and our elderly go uncared for? Is that the kind of country the Republican’s want? Is that what America stands for? Do we want to spend less on citizen care while huge corporations like GE pay no taxes because of unclosed corporate tax loopholes? Do we want to lose health care and education while companies like Exxon enjoy billion dollar tax rebates even as they make trillions in profit? That’s what McConnell and his cohorts want.

 

The Republicans, even the smart ones like Tom Coburn of Oklahoma keep talking about the government having doubled in size in the last dozen years. Sure it has but they fail to mention that almost the entire expansion has been the result of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA and NSA. Necessary agencies that oversee welfare cheating, which is one their biggest bugaboos, have been slashed to almost nothing, as have those agencies that are supposed to oversee Wall Street, banking and real estate fraud. We have added a quarter of a million people to the government payroll just in Homeland Security while all the other departments in government have shrunk. That’s what has to be cut. Sure we need security but what we need is quality not quantity

 

It’s fascinating that McConnell and his right wing buddies are now strutting around saying that they were the motivating cause behind  the 99% now paying lower taxes when the reality is that they fought tooth and nail against that happening. Isn’t it great when you can lose the fight and claim the victory at the same time? It’s easy when you have no moral compass and everything you do or say is based on a lie. It seems that lack of truth wasn’t just an electoral issue with the Republicans, it seems that it it’s the basis of their entire political philosophy.