SicEmBaylor
10/14/2010, 06:15 PM
Folks, it seems some of you are under the mistaken impression that (assuming a GOP takeover of either the House and/or Senate) there will be a real fundamental difference between the 110th/111th Congress and the 112th. Let me just stop you right there -- any change, at best, will be marginal. Let me tell you just a few things that are not going to happen if and when the GOP retakes control of one or both bodies of Congress:
1. The GOP will not repeal ObamaCare. It isn't going to happen -- plain and simple. Sure, they may tweak the health care bill here and there and reform parts and then go to the public and tout it as a major revision, but the health care bill and its major tenants are here to stay. For one thing, Obama himself is never ever going to sign legislation that guts the marquee legislation of his first-term. Secondly, by the time a Republican President comes to office (and let me tell you it is most definitely NOT a sure thing that Obama will lose in '12) the health care bill will be well established in American law.
2. The GOP will not cut the budget. You aren't going to see huge and much needed budget cuts under a Republican congress even when they're trying to stick it to a Democrat President. It has almost never happened, and the new Congress will be absolutely no different. You can put away any thoughts that the new Congress will be fiscally responsible right now. Sure, programs here and there may see some cuts but Congress will still spend far far far more than the revenue it brings in. And what will happen when we have a Republican President? Well, they'll go back to the sort of spending we saw with a GOP Congress and President Bush. There's absolutely no question that the Republican Party is as fiscally irresponsible as the Democrats -- we need only look at 8 years of Republican rule to see the truth.
3. The GOP will not reduce the deficit. The Republican Party has shown that it's far more interested in tax-cuts without reciprocal cuts in spending. For years, GOP policy makers and economists told us the deficit was nothing to be concerned about so long as the economy continued to grow. Well, now the economy isn't growing and our national deficit has reached a level that is almost impossible to even conceptualize. According to the US National Debt Clock, our national debt stands at a staggering 13.6 TRILLION dollars which amounts to a debt of $43,000 per American. The consequences of this debt are so dire that it astounds me that people aren't in the street with torches and pitchforks. Perhaps most Americans are waiting for the day when the floor truly drops from under our feet and the situation becomes virtually un-fixable. ANY politician who votes for a single new cent of government spending should be tarred and feathered on Constitution ave.
4. The GOP will not protect our civil liberties. Another thing the GOP is not going to do is stop the encroachment on our civil liberties under the auspices of our protection and fighting un-winnable "wars" against drugs, terrorism, and other boogey men. Rarely does a single day go by that we don't read a new story about a Federal law-enforcement agency harassing or arresting citizens that pose NO threat to society-at-large. Combined with new technology and creative ways to track citizens, Big Brother isn't coming...he's already here. Sadly, you won't see "law and order" Republicans do a thing to protect our individual rights that become fewer and fewer every day and go well beyond 2nd Amendment issues.
5. The GOP will not remove us from disastrous foreign treaties and organizations. If you're sure of nothing else, be sure that the GOP will do little or nothing to remove us from the United Nations or NATO. Despite the fact that Republicans love to use hatred of the UN to rally grass-roots supporters, when it comes time to put up or shut up, the GOP will put up. You will never see a serious Republican effort to withdraw our support from the UN even if we had 50 years of continual-GOP power. Likewise, more than 60 years after WWII and almost 20 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, we continue to pledge our support to NATO long after it has outlived its purpose. There is absolutely no compelling reason that we should continue to spend money to support vast numbers of troops and equipment overseas in places like Europe and Cold War hotspots like Korea. Bringing these troops home would save money and send a clear message that our Republic was not created to be the world's policeman, to spend billions of dollars nation-building, to build new shacks replacing old shacks in useless 3rd world pit-holes, or to "protect" allies that are perfectly capable of protecting themselves.
6. The GOP will not remove us from our NAFTA and CAFTA treaty obligations. Free trade is great when trade is between two equitable economies. For example, these United States and Canada have very similar economies with very similar tax systems and regulator obligations. When promoting NAFTA during the 90s, President Clinton told Americans workers and industry that they had to learn to "compete" on the world stage. The problem is that American labor can not compete with the kind of cheap labor found in Mexico and Latin America. American industry is saddled with taxes, minimum wage requirements, regulations, etc. that are often missing south of the border. There is no question that American workers are among the finest if not the finest in the entire world, but there is simply nothing their respective industries can do to compete against Mexican workers that are paid in a month what one American worker has to get paid in a day. The result is that our manufacturing industries are vanishing, Americans are losing their jobs, and those jobs are going south of the border where Mexican industry isn't saddled with the same the level of restrictions their American counterparts have been. I absolutely support free-trade with a nation that we can truly compete against on a level playing field, but I have a huge problem with expecting American workers to compete with two hands tied behind their back and hopping on one leg. The problem with free-trade agreements is that it limits our nation's sovereign right to craft and change trade policy based on changing the changing economy.
7. The GOP will not eliminate or reduce massive unconstitutional Federal agencies, departments, and bureaucracies. For decades, the GOP talked about eliminating Federal agencies that were either unconstitutional, unnecessary, inefficient, or (likely) all 3 combined. The GOP dropped this plank from their platform but, under President Bush, did a complete 180 creating one of the largest new entitlement programs since the Great Society (Medicare prescription drugs) while giving the much-hated Department of Education a wide range of new powers that encroached on the rights of states and local government to control education policy. Worse yet, a Republican Congress and Republican President created a multitude of new government agencies with an untold number of new levels of bureaucracies to "stream line" the process of gathering and sharing intelligence related to national security. All of this time, and I thought only Democrats were stupid enough to believe that you could make a system more efficient by creating more government. The 112th Congress under the Republicans will likely have much of the same leadership that was responsible for these massive failures during the Bush years.
8. The GOP will not reform. If you're expecting the GOP to reform itself from the massive failures its accumulated since 1998/2000 then who they pick as their national leaders will be very telling. Boehner will almost certainly become Speaker of the House, unfortunately. Who the GOP chooses as its Majority Leader is going to tell the degree to which the GOP is interested in reform. If they pick from the same old cabal that was responsible for running GOP House operations from the last time they were in power then they have learned nothing. There are some good young reformers in the House and they need to be put into positions of leadership.
Finally, this should be the very last chance for the GOP as a national party. If they get this wrong, which I expect them to do, then true grass-roots conservatives need to burn the GOP house down and start anew. The party is barely worth supporting (on a national level) as it is, but one more massive failure like their last 8-10 years in power should be met with universal scorn and derision by all conservatives. Some of you may continue to parrot that ridiculous line about supporting the "lesser of two evils." That may be good enough for you, but for a Republic as great as ours was supposed to be and under a governmental framework that is the greatest in all human history...I demand a little bit better.
1. The GOP will not repeal ObamaCare. It isn't going to happen -- plain and simple. Sure, they may tweak the health care bill here and there and reform parts and then go to the public and tout it as a major revision, but the health care bill and its major tenants are here to stay. For one thing, Obama himself is never ever going to sign legislation that guts the marquee legislation of his first-term. Secondly, by the time a Republican President comes to office (and let me tell you it is most definitely NOT a sure thing that Obama will lose in '12) the health care bill will be well established in American law.
2. The GOP will not cut the budget. You aren't going to see huge and much needed budget cuts under a Republican congress even when they're trying to stick it to a Democrat President. It has almost never happened, and the new Congress will be absolutely no different. You can put away any thoughts that the new Congress will be fiscally responsible right now. Sure, programs here and there may see some cuts but Congress will still spend far far far more than the revenue it brings in. And what will happen when we have a Republican President? Well, they'll go back to the sort of spending we saw with a GOP Congress and President Bush. There's absolutely no question that the Republican Party is as fiscally irresponsible as the Democrats -- we need only look at 8 years of Republican rule to see the truth.
3. The GOP will not reduce the deficit. The Republican Party has shown that it's far more interested in tax-cuts without reciprocal cuts in spending. For years, GOP policy makers and economists told us the deficit was nothing to be concerned about so long as the economy continued to grow. Well, now the economy isn't growing and our national deficit has reached a level that is almost impossible to even conceptualize. According to the US National Debt Clock, our national debt stands at a staggering 13.6 TRILLION dollars which amounts to a debt of $43,000 per American. The consequences of this debt are so dire that it astounds me that people aren't in the street with torches and pitchforks. Perhaps most Americans are waiting for the day when the floor truly drops from under our feet and the situation becomes virtually un-fixable. ANY politician who votes for a single new cent of government spending should be tarred and feathered on Constitution ave.
4. The GOP will not protect our civil liberties. Another thing the GOP is not going to do is stop the encroachment on our civil liberties under the auspices of our protection and fighting un-winnable "wars" against drugs, terrorism, and other boogey men. Rarely does a single day go by that we don't read a new story about a Federal law-enforcement agency harassing or arresting citizens that pose NO threat to society-at-large. Combined with new technology and creative ways to track citizens, Big Brother isn't coming...he's already here. Sadly, you won't see "law and order" Republicans do a thing to protect our individual rights that become fewer and fewer every day and go well beyond 2nd Amendment issues.
5. The GOP will not remove us from disastrous foreign treaties and organizations. If you're sure of nothing else, be sure that the GOP will do little or nothing to remove us from the United Nations or NATO. Despite the fact that Republicans love to use hatred of the UN to rally grass-roots supporters, when it comes time to put up or shut up, the GOP will put up. You will never see a serious Republican effort to withdraw our support from the UN even if we had 50 years of continual-GOP power. Likewise, more than 60 years after WWII and almost 20 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, we continue to pledge our support to NATO long after it has outlived its purpose. There is absolutely no compelling reason that we should continue to spend money to support vast numbers of troops and equipment overseas in places like Europe and Cold War hotspots like Korea. Bringing these troops home would save money and send a clear message that our Republic was not created to be the world's policeman, to spend billions of dollars nation-building, to build new shacks replacing old shacks in useless 3rd world pit-holes, or to "protect" allies that are perfectly capable of protecting themselves.
6. The GOP will not remove us from our NAFTA and CAFTA treaty obligations. Free trade is great when trade is between two equitable economies. For example, these United States and Canada have very similar economies with very similar tax systems and regulator obligations. When promoting NAFTA during the 90s, President Clinton told Americans workers and industry that they had to learn to "compete" on the world stage. The problem is that American labor can not compete with the kind of cheap labor found in Mexico and Latin America. American industry is saddled with taxes, minimum wage requirements, regulations, etc. that are often missing south of the border. There is no question that American workers are among the finest if not the finest in the entire world, but there is simply nothing their respective industries can do to compete against Mexican workers that are paid in a month what one American worker has to get paid in a day. The result is that our manufacturing industries are vanishing, Americans are losing their jobs, and those jobs are going south of the border where Mexican industry isn't saddled with the same the level of restrictions their American counterparts have been. I absolutely support free-trade with a nation that we can truly compete against on a level playing field, but I have a huge problem with expecting American workers to compete with two hands tied behind their back and hopping on one leg. The problem with free-trade agreements is that it limits our nation's sovereign right to craft and change trade policy based on changing the changing economy.
7. The GOP will not eliminate or reduce massive unconstitutional Federal agencies, departments, and bureaucracies. For decades, the GOP talked about eliminating Federal agencies that were either unconstitutional, unnecessary, inefficient, or (likely) all 3 combined. The GOP dropped this plank from their platform but, under President Bush, did a complete 180 creating one of the largest new entitlement programs since the Great Society (Medicare prescription drugs) while giving the much-hated Department of Education a wide range of new powers that encroached on the rights of states and local government to control education policy. Worse yet, a Republican Congress and Republican President created a multitude of new government agencies with an untold number of new levels of bureaucracies to "stream line" the process of gathering and sharing intelligence related to national security. All of this time, and I thought only Democrats were stupid enough to believe that you could make a system more efficient by creating more government. The 112th Congress under the Republicans will likely have much of the same leadership that was responsible for these massive failures during the Bush years.
8. The GOP will not reform. If you're expecting the GOP to reform itself from the massive failures its accumulated since 1998/2000 then who they pick as their national leaders will be very telling. Boehner will almost certainly become Speaker of the House, unfortunately. Who the GOP chooses as its Majority Leader is going to tell the degree to which the GOP is interested in reform. If they pick from the same old cabal that was responsible for running GOP House operations from the last time they were in power then they have learned nothing. There are some good young reformers in the House and they need to be put into positions of leadership.
Finally, this should be the very last chance for the GOP as a national party. If they get this wrong, which I expect them to do, then true grass-roots conservatives need to burn the GOP house down and start anew. The party is barely worth supporting (on a national level) as it is, but one more massive failure like their last 8-10 years in power should be met with universal scorn and derision by all conservatives. Some of you may continue to parrot that ridiculous line about supporting the "lesser of two evils." That may be good enough for you, but for a Republic as great as ours was supposed to be and under a governmental framework that is the greatest in all human history...I demand a little bit better.