Republican Politics

Whatever you want to call it -- heartburn, anxiety, agita -- the GOP's got it and, as my column from today's Roll Call explains, it's getting steadily worse as the October 1 deadline for a continuing resolution gets closer by the day.

Need for October CR Creating Serious GOP Angst

By Stan Collender
Roll Call Contributing Writer
July 17, 2012, Midnight

There’s increasing nervousness on Capitol Hill these days about the one thing that has to be done on the budget before voters go to the polls.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is one of the names being mentioned as a possible running mate for Mitt Romney. In addition to being the governor from what is considered an important swing state, McDonell supposedly has strong credentials as a fiscal conservative that would help Romney wit the GOP base.

But you really have to wonder whether McDonnell deserves the reputation as a conservative after the decision he announced yesterday to spend millions of state dollars to upgrade the Washington Redskins' practice facility in Ashburn, VA. Keep in mind that:

1. The Redskins aren't just a privately-owned team, they are one of the most profitable teams in all of professional sports.

2. This is the Washington Redskins, not the Virginia Redskins.

3. The team plays its games in a stadium located in Maryland.

Over at TPM, Brian Beutler has a story about House Republican efforts to cut the budget of the Office of Management and Budget.

The story is sad and ridiculous: it shows that House Republicans have become just like the kid in the schoolyard who throws a tantrum and threatens to take the ball and go home if what he or she wants isn't done immediately.

The bottom line: The House GOP says its going to reduce OMB's budget by $9 million from 2012 to 2013.

Never mind that there's no indication that OMB is overstaffed or inefficient in any way. In fact, I haven't been able to find a single written analysis or congressional hearing where OMB's efficiency was seriously questioned. In other words, this decision isn't based on facts; it's all political.

Never mind that $9 million doesn't even qualify as a rounding error when it comes to the federal budget and that the cost of the GOP's deciding to reduce OMB's budget by this amount probably wiped out a significant part of the proposed reduction.

My guess is that Paul Krugman thought that this post was one of the more trifling economic-oriented pieces he has written in a while. It was short and probably took little time. It was also seemingly commonplace. After all, it was about a politician who said something inherently and obviously false.

But I found it to be extremely disturbing, not because it was off-the-wall -- it's anything but -- but because it described a behavior -- bald-face lying -- that has become so blatant and commonplace among Republican policymakers on economic issues that any one of them who is even slightly honest and candid now would be both an absolute rarity and a welcome relief.

And the fact that the GOP lying about the economy...and especially the budget...is so accepted and expected means that any Republican who wasn't jump-the-shark ridiculous on these issues wouldn't be allowed to stay in the party much longer.

As I explain at the beginning of my weekly Roll Call column, I resisted the incredibly strong urge to talk about Etch A Sketch federal budgeting and instead discussed one of the most ridiculous, lazy, and absurd (Get the picture?) reasons supporters of the budget proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) say its valuable: It moves the U.S. back to the historical averages for both spending and revenues.

Honestly, saying that historical averages are meaningful in any way for what should be done now or in the future is just nonsense.

Ryan's Historical Averages Are Irrelevant to Budget Debate

By Stan Collender
Roll Call Contributing Writer
March 27, 2012, Midnight