So here we are on Day Whatever, Day Way Too Many, of the Republican shutdown of the federal government.
We press ever harder against Republican refusal by Oct. 17 to raise the debt ceiling to keep government’s bills paid. That would cause a Republican market collapse and a Republican worldwide recession.
Republican? Yes. Of course.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was right the other day when he told a reporter for Politico that the reporter tried to seem so fair in his reporting that he was, in fact, unfair.
When you apply formulaic reporting balance, quoting the Democrats as blaming Republicans and Republicans as blaming Democrats and leaving it there as if symmetrical, then you leave untold the truth.
And the truth is that the shutdown nonsense and the debt-ceiling scare are the Republicans’ fault.
Republicans do not have the votes to repeal, delay or weaken Obamacare. That’s true outright or in regard either to a continuing resolution to keep government running or raising the debt ceiling so that the federal government does not have to downsize itself suddenly and arbitrarily—and disastrously—by 36 percent. That is the percentage of spending that is borrowed.
By not agreeing to continued spending without their minority riders to weaken Obamacare, Republicans are the ones solely responsible for shutting down the broad so-called discretionary aspects of the federal government.
If they don’t agree to raising the debt limit absent untenable concessions, then they will be the ones responsible for much worse.
Republicans counter that President Barack Obama must negotiate with them.
Negotiate what? Whether to shut down the government. Is that negotiable? Absolutely not. Whether to pay our bills and avoid international economic calamity? No, a trillion times no.
Yes, the president could agree to let the Republicans claim a tiny victory by acquiescing to their repeal of a financial element of the Affordable Care Act, that being a tax on medical devices.
But that merely would reinforce the irresponsible tactic of forcing a negotiation over something as basic and vital as keeping government running. And it would invite one party to play the same game against the other party the next time, giving us a permanent government on the edge of a cliff.
It is time to stop irrational obstruction and government on the edge.
Usually Mike Huckabee is wrong, but sometimes he’s right. And he is right on this shutdown nonsense.
Our former governor said this the other day: “This week most of the Republican callers to my radio show supported the shutdown and the showdown. One of them said it best. He said, ‘We sent those guys to Washington to take a stand.’
“That’s when I realized, Houston, we’ve got a problem. Because, no, we didn’t send those guys to Washington to ‘take a stand.’ We sent them to govern.
“You see, it’s really easy to take a stand. Heck, you don’t even have to go to the trouble of running for office or serving as an elected official. On radio and TV, I take a stand every day.
“You can take a stand by raising your voice on the Capitol steps. But to make a real change, you’ve got to get inside that building and have a vote. … And unless the numbers are all on your side, you are not going to get everything you want.”
Yes, sir. What he said. Amen, pastor.
And it’s what he almost always did, as he further explained, as a minority governor of Arkansas.
For all his religious fundamentalism, Huckabee turns out to be wiser than the political fundamentalists—the apocalyptic cultists—who have taken over the right wing of his party in Congress and introduced politics of obstruction and destruction.
We won’t have a prayer of stopping this path of destruction until all of you join Huckabee and me and a few others in telling the truth and calling out those who deserve to be called out.
Speaking of truth-telling—or, more precisely, calling out the absolute opposite thereof—we have Tom Cotton’s new campaign ad.
It attacks Mark Pryor for casting the deciding vote for Obamacare and voting to exempt himself from Obamacare and give himself a special subsidy for the Obamacare.
Pryor’s campaign put out a statement Monday detailing the assessment of those claims compiled by PolitiFact. That’s an independent online service that scores political rhetoric on a Truth-O-Meter, from a pants-on-fire lie to mostly false to exaggerated to half-truth to mostly true to true.
PolitiFact won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for its work keeping tabs of the truth and lies in the presidential race of 2008.
I’ve told you all of this already, but, just as it was nice to have Huckabee’s validation previously, it is gratifying to have PolitiFact’s agreement here.
According to PolitiFact, the claim that “any senator” cast the decisive vote for Obamacare was “mostly false.” And the idea that Congress has given itself special treatment and a special subsidy on Obamacare is “wrong in almost every regard” and worthy of “pants of fire” designation.
Maybe the only way out of his shutdown in Washington is to send in the fire department to hose down the out-of-control blaze taking place on the trousers on the Republican side of the aisle.
Yes, there are burning britches on the Democratic side as well. But this is about telling the truth.
And the truth is that Republicans are burning down the House.
John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.