Sabotage governing

[babylonsister]

Sabotage governing

By Greg Sargent, Published: July 9 at 4:42 pmE-mail the writer


It’s not unusual to hear dirty hippie liberal blogger types (and the occasional lefty Nobel Prize winner) point out that today’s GOP has effectively abdicated the role of functional opposition party, instead opting for a kind of post-policy nihilism in which sabotaging the Obama agenda has become its only guiding governing light.

But when you hear this sort of argument coming from Chuck Todd, the mild-mannered, well respected Beltway insider, it should prompt folks to take notice.

That’s essentially what Todd, along with Mark Murray and the rest of MSNBC’s First Read crew, argued this morning. It’s worth quoting at length:

Here’s a thought exercise on this summer morning: Imagine that after the controversial Medicare prescription-drug legislation was passed into law in 2003, Democrats did everything they could to thwart one of George W. Bush’s top domestic achievements. They launched Senate filibusters to block essential HHS appointees from administering the law; they warned the sports and entertainment industries from participating in any public service announcements to help seniors understand how the law works; and, after taking control of the House of Representatives in 2007, they used the power of the purse to prohibit any more federal funds from being used to implement the law. As it turns out, none of that happened. And despite Democratic warnings that the law would be a bust — we remember the 2004 Dem presidential candidates campaigning against it — the Medicare prescription-drug law has been, for the most part, a pretty big success.

But that thought exercise has become a reality 10 years later as Republicans have worked to thwart/stymie/sabotage — pick your word — the implementation of President Obama’s health-care and financial-reform laws.

Recently, the top-two Senate Republicans — Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn — wrote a letter to the NFL and other major sports leagues warning them not to participate in any campaign to promote implementation of Obamacare. The Koch Brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity is in unchartered waters running TV ads to help prevent the law from being implemented, while the Obama political arm is also on the air promoting implementation. And Senate Republicans have vowed to filibuster any nominee (no matter how qualified) to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the financial-reform law. [...]

And this all raises the question: What’s the line between fighting for your ideology and ensuring that the government that pays your salaries actually works — or even attempts to work? At some point, governing has to take place, but when does that begin? We know what opponents will say in response to this: These are bad laws, and we have to do whatever it takes to stop them. But at what point does an election have a governing consequence?

...

This from MSNBC’s First Read crew is very well said. But I’d take it further; it goes well beyond Obamacare implementation and the relentless blockading of Obama nominees for the explicit purpose of preventing democratically-created agencies from functioning. We’ve slowly crossed over into something a bit different. It’s now become accepted as normal that Republicans will threaten explicitly to allow harm to the country to get what they want, and will allow untold numbers of Americans to be hurt rather than even enter into negotiations over the sort of compromises that lie at the heart of basic governing.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/07/09/sabotage-governing/

[FSogol]

1. K & R. n/t

[JoePhilly]

2. About time Chucky noticed.

[GoCubsGo]

3. You know things are bad when even toadies like Schmuck Todd recognize it.

I hope this is the start of the tables turning...

[malaise]

4. I've been saying this for four years

Sabotage plain and simple and they should be punished

[Volaris]

5. They don't WANT "democratically-created agancies" to fucntion...

The Coporations that keep funding their electiion campaigns PAY them to not want that. Because democratically-created agencies WILL cost those Corporations money. And we can't have that, now CAN WE?

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

6. The corporations do not want regulation enforcement...

... Phil Gramm said it best, when the head of the SEC was asking for more funds for regulation enforcement, "if you ask me again for more funding, I will defund your agency". (paraphrased, don't have the link handy at the moment)

"Gramm's long been a handmaiden to Big Finance. In the 1990s, as chairman of the Senate banking committee, he routinely turned down Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt's requests for more money to police Wall Street; during this period, the SEC's workload shot up 80 percent, but its staff grew only 20 percent. Gramm also opposed an SEC rule that would have prohibited accounting firms from getting too close to the companies they audited—at one point, according to Levitt's memoir, he warned the SEC chairman that if the commission adopted the rule, its funding would be cut."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/05/foreclosure-phil

on edit: To insert quote/link