Republicans unanimously vote against fiscal responsibility

President Barack Obama Friday signed into law a bill that raises the US debt ceiling to 14.3 trillion dollars. Obama signed the measure at a time of rising public anxiety over increasing US government debts and deficits.

Included in the law were PAYGO budget rules. These budget rules require that any spending proposals must either be budget neutral or offset with savings derived from existing funds. The Democrats goal in passing these rules is to force Congress to engage in carefully prioritizing expenses and exercising fiscal restraint.

  

Every Republican in the House and Senate voted against these PAYGO rules.

House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said that the PAYGO measure was a vital step towards ending the kind of fiscal irresponsibility that buckled US government finances.

"It has a proven track record of success," Pelosi said."When instituted in the 1990s, it produced record surpluses; when abandoned by the Bush administration and the Republican-led Congress in the last decade, we were left with record deficits. "Today, these irresponsible practices will end."

So much for the republican talking points of being the party of fiscal responsibility. 

Republican hypocrisy reigns supreme as they plan to dismantle Medicare

Even as they denounce modest democratic proposals to rein in Medicare’s rising costs, the Republicans, themselves, are seeking to dismantle the whole program. Dismantling would begin with spending cuts of about $650 billion over the next decade.

Rep. Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee, recently released a budget plan called the “Roadmap for America’s Future”.

What emerges from this scheme is an economic agenda that hasn’t changed one bit in response to the economic failures of the Bush years. In addition to a plan for Social Security privatization,  a twin to the Bush proposal of five years ago, Rep. Ryan offers a plan to dismantle Medicare.

In the Republican plan, nobody currently under the age of 55 would be covered by Medicare as it now exists. Instead, people would receive vouchers and be forced to buy their own insurance. This new privatized version of Medicare would erode over time because the value of these vouchers would likely lag ever further behind the actual cost of health insurance. By the time Americans now in their 20s or 30s reached the age of eligibility, there wouldn’t be much of a Medicare program left.

Of those who already are covered by Medicare, or who will enter the program over the next decade, they will still be eligible for traditional Medicare. However the Congressional Budget Office has determined that the Republican plan would force higher-income enrollees to pay higher premiums, and payments to Medicare programs would be reduced.  In short, there would be significant cuts to Medicare and higher fees as proposed by the Republicans.

Just as the republicans have waged war against health reform with utter hypocrisy, they plan the same for Medicare. 

Republicans, who hate Medicare and tried to cut off funding for it in the past, and still aim to dismantle the program over time, have been scoring political points by denouncing democratic proposals for modest cost savings; savings that are substantially smaller than the $650 billion in spending cuts concealed in their own republican proposals.

If Democrats don’t get their act together, this shameless act of stunning republican hypocrisy will succeed.

Majority of Minnesotans embarrassed by Rep. Michele Bachmann

A new survey of Minnesotans shows that 56% of the state's residents are embarrassed by Rep. Michele Bachmann. The survey was commissioned by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America, and Credo Action. It was conducted by phone by Research 2000 on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1.

The survey follows recent divisive statements by Bachmann that she believes President Barack Obama wants to “annihilate” conservatives, that the U.S. faces "a curse and extinction" if it fails to support Israel; and that government must  "wean” Americans off of social safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security.

There were some surprising findings from the survey. While the Minneapolis-area district represented by Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison led the state in finding Bachmann an embarrassment, the relatively conservative District 8, the northern Minnesota area represented by Rep. James Oberstar, came in second, with 69% of respondents responding negatively to Bachmann. 

In Bachmann’s own district 39% found her embarrassing. However a majority of  independents surveyed in her district, a group likely to determine the outcome of the next election in November, responded negatively to Bachmann, with 62% answering that she was embarrassing.