Our nongoverning, high-spending Republican leaders want us to keep believing they are the “conservatives” and all others are the big spenders.
Far too many members of the GOP perpetuate this lie in virtually every soundbite, but neither the numbers nor the rhetoric add up. And it appears that Americans are finally noticing.
Just the ninth committee on Benghazi has, to date, spent $4.5 million for no new information. But that’s just the spending on the current Benghazi committee: One estimate tossed around in Thursday’s hearing put the total tally at $20 million-plus. If the committee lives up to expectations, its cost may finally tally in at about $5.6 million, meaning it will cost more than the budgets of nine other House committees dedicated to real issues – like helping American veterans, aiding small businesses and investigating ethics.
Meanwhile, the GOP-majority House of Republicans is still struggling to get its act together and elect a speaker. By the time Paul Ryan gets a vote to be that speaker this week – if he does – the next potential shutdown bomb will be tick, tick, ticking.
Just three and a half weeks ago, on Sept. 30, President Barack Obama signed legislation to prevent an Oct. 1 government shutdown after the GOP’s obsession with defunding Planned Parenthood made any other agreement impossible. But the stopgap spending bill only funds government through Dec. 11. Meanwhile, Congress will have to consider a long-term highway bill, expiring tax breaks and raising the debt ceiling, which currently sits at just over $18.1 trillion. In fact the debt ceiling has an even tighter deadline: Analysts estimate it could be breached anytime now and certainly before Nov. 1.
Already for years, our government, military and diplomatic offices have been struggling to patch their duties together on funding approved only one year at a time after continuing resolutions were the only things Congress could pass. (The resulting uncertainty of funding, in fact, is noted as one of the root problems found in the previous eight Benghazi committee findings.) Year after year, it is clear that Republican lawmakers’ sole objective has been to throw obstacle after obstacle at President Obama – even on issues that initially were Republican ideas. If President Obama was for it, the GOP was suddenly against it.
Just last week, our own Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander sent out a news release rebuke of the president’s veto of a spending exemption bill disguised as patriotic care of our servicemen and women.
The president on Thursday vetoed the $612 billion defense policy bill that included an increase in spending that the president requested, but it also included a congressional sleight of hand in the way that funding would be handled. Lawmakers increased defense spending by padding a separate war-fighting account with an extra $38.3 billion. That account – for overseas contingency operations – would not be subject to spending limits, while all other domestic agencies would continue to be capped or cut. The president, along with Defense Secretary Ash Carter and many Democrats, want a broader budget deal. Republicans, however, argue the military should be spared many of the so-called sequestration budget cuts, and they charge that Democrats want to camouflage a so-called desire for “irresponsible domestic spending.”
Here’s how Alexander panned the veto: “This bill impacts more than 40,000 people at Fort Campbell, the Naval Support Activity Mid-South in Millington and throughout Tennessee. It not only would have increased pay for military personnel but it also would have allowed commanders to arm certain personnel on domestic military bases in response to the tragic shooting in Chattanooga in July that killed five service members “
Bicker, bicker, spin, spin.
But Republicans in office seem tone deaf to what’s going on right in front of them. Here we are a year out from the 2016 general election and they still can’t hear the constituents. Those constituents are so disgusted with no-business-as-usual in this Congress that three GOP presidential candidates with no government experience – repeat no government experience – are leading GOP polls.
If these polls continue to track, that could give us reality star and snake-oil salesman Donald Trump, or brain surgeon evangelical Ben Carson, or twice-failed CEO Carly Fiorina.
The American people – not just Republicans – have been severely put at risk by these renegade partisan majority Republicans in Congress who have practically brought our nation to halt on far too many frightening fronts.
The GOP electorate is right to be disgusted and to want to throw out these so-called congressional statesmen and a Washington as we know it. Unfortunately, the protest votes seemed destined instead toward the presidential race, courted by the cheerleaders running for president.
The Republicans have been hoisted by their own petard.