It now seems clear that the far-right Republican members of the self-described "Hell, No Caucus" are willing to drive the nation into another recession just to prove how intransigent they can be against resetting the federal debt limit. If they don't wake up quickly, it will be too late to avert the painful consequences of their misguided views on the economy and economic justice.
Their my-way-or-the-highway antics and know-nothing myopia - it's their party that ran up the lion's share of the federal debt, and it's the super wealthy who have benefited so richly from that debt - are already generating economic backlash.
Markets started moving against the dollar Wednesday even before credit rating agencies warned Washington that they were considering downgrading the government's top Aaa bond rating. If Republicans force a historic default on national debt, it's America's middle class that will bear the brunt of the tea party kickback on the debt limit.
If the Republican right wing kills the Treasury's ability to borrow, the riptide is sure to batter consumers and dry up the discretionary spending that keeps the economy lubricated. As the dollar declines and recession sets in, prices for oil and necessary imports will rise. That will kill consumer spending and new jobs, drive up unemployment, increase cost to government for unemployment insurance, and prompt more mortgage foreclosures and public health care costs.
The irony of this incredibly witless stage act is staggering. It boils down to this: The GOP's right wing is demanding deep cuts in core entitlement programs - chiefly Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, the backbone of middle-class security financed through withholding taxes on the middle class - because their icons, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II, dug the nation into shackling debt. They also forbid any offsetting increases in revenue to address the debt.
That's grossly unfair to ordinary Americans. The Republican debt went largely for tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations, borrowing for foreign wars and lax regulation for big investment banks and Wall Street's portfolio scammers and uber-millionaires. It should be partly repaid now through increases in revenue from closing tax loopholes and corporate giveaways, and a roll-back of the high-end Bush II tax cuts on the wealthiest 2 percent -mainly on the top 1 percent - whose share of the nation's wealth, courtesy of Bush II's stunning investment tax cuts, is now higher than at any time since the Great Depression.
But the tea-party types would let those who got the largesse of the tax cuts keep it. They would make those who worked for family wages to secure their wrongly maligned "entitlement" programs give up their economic security. This isn't justice; its economic theft by ideologues who don't realize, or care, what they are doing.
Bush II, alone, unblinkingly asked Congress for six increases in the federal debt limit as he racked up the largest increase in the federal debt since the real emergency of World War II. When he took office, the debt stood at $5.7 trillion. When he left - after a borrowing binge for two wars, gratuitous tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug bill - the debt was over $12 trillion, with another $1.5 trillion in the pipeline.
And proving that tax cuts for the wealthy don't generate jobs and prosperity, the economy had tanked into in the worst recession since the Great Depression, forcing Bush to issue $800 billion in TARP funds to the very institutions that put the economy in a deep hole.
Yet Republicans are blaming President Obama's administration for failing to fix the worst recession in 80 years in 30 months. And though they sabotaged his plans for a robust stimulus to boost recovery, they now want a return to the very fiscal policies that caused the recession.
It's bad enough that Republicans are in deep denial about their spending and tax policies that drove the economy in a ditch. They shouldn't hurt ordinary Americans by hindering orderly borrowing, and by denying Obama's comprehensive proposal to bring the debt down in a reasonable way.