Their healthcare proposal? Nothing that would begin to cover what Obamacare would - but an increase in the deficit and debt. Their budget proposal? No cuts to entitlements or defense, no tax hikes, and pathetic squabbling over discretionary spending. I'm with James Hamilton:
If you have a concrete proposal to raise tax revenue or cut spending, then put it on the table. But if you simply want to grandstand on the debt ceiling as if it were a stand-alone issue, it is clear that you have nothing but contempt for the voters.
And if so, then you deserve the same in return.
A reader chimes in:
You used to talk a lot about unseriousness in the GOP. It seems to me that's the word we ought to keep front and center when we look at things like the HCR repeal bill. It's an unserious action for a few reasons.
It can't pass the Senate, and the President won't sign it. So it's just theater. And they're going to suspend their own rules about paying as they go to cover the CBO's $100 billion dollars of projected savings. That shows they're not really serious about being fiscally responsible. It seems to me that unserious is really the best word, because it covers so much of what's wrong. When they pander to Fox's audience with theatrical bills that have no chance of becoming law, that's unserious. When they talk about fiscal responsibility and then try to add $100 bn to the debt without covering it, in violation of their own grandstanding rules, that's unserious. But at the same time, when they start investigating the President -- when they say this is the most corrupt administration in recent history -- that's unserious as well.
This is going to be a revealing Congress, is it not?
2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan