The Scam On America
With great fanfare, House Republicans unveiled their "Pledge to America" yesterday, a document comprised primarily of attacks on legislation passed under President Obama. "The 45-page booklet explaining the Pledge contains archaic fonts reminiscent of the founding texts," writes the Washington Post's Dana Milbank. "Yet for all the grandiosity, the document they released is small in its ambition." Further investigation of the final release -- once the attacks on an "arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites" and the full-color photographs of the House Republican elite are overlooked -- reveals that the "2010 Republican Agenda" is little more than a re-affirmation of the "Party of No." Yesterday's Progress Report noted that the entire economic platform of the pledge is a return to Bush's tax cuts and spending levels, the failed policies that brought us the worst recession since the Great Depression. The promised combination of regressive tax cuts, deficit reduction, and new spending in the Pledge is "fuzzy Washington math," charges Newsweek's Ben Adler. Energy policy is dispatched in one sentence. The Republican plan on health care is to replace the Affordable Care Act with provisions from the Affordable Care Act. "The Pledge to America should have been called the Scam on America because it does nothing to help Americans," writes the Examiner's Maryann Tobin, "unless of course they are CEOs of big oil companies, drug companies, or Wall Street bankers." Conservatives found the document risible as well. "It is a series of compromises and milquetoast rhetorical flourishes in search of unanimity among House Republicans because the House GOP does not have the fortitude to lead boldly in opposition to Barack Obama," charged right-wing blogger and CNN contributor Erick Erickson. "We're not going to be any different than what we've been," House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said at the Pledge's revealing. "It's not even a sequel!" the Daily Show's Jon Stewart responded. "It's like a shot-by-shot remake."
GOP PLEDGE TO LOBBYISTS: As the Huffington Post's Sam Stein revealed yesterday, the GOP's new "Pledge to America" was directed by a staffer named Brian Wild who, until early this year, was a lobbyist at a prominent D.C. firm that lobbied on behalf of corporate giants like Exxon. Moreover, the insurance industry is the leading contributor to Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the Republican who led the effort. "Instead of a pledge to the American people, Congressional Republicans made a pledge to the big special interests to restore the same economic ideas that benefited them at the expense of middle-class families," White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer argues. Consistent with its desire to placate lobbyists, the pledge omits any mention of a key Republican mantra: a ban on earmarks. When it comes to energy policy, the GOP leaders ignore public opinion and science, instead promoting the same old ideas flogged by Big Oil lobbyists and other energy interests: more oil drilling ("increase access to domestic energy sources") while disregarding pollution ("oppose attempts to impose a national 'cap and trade' energy tax"). The GOP pledge would also halt clean energy investments made under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and block new safety, health and environmental rules. "Rather than listening to the American people, the pledge listens to polluter lobbyists," describes Center for American Progress Action Fund senior fellow Daniel J. Weiss.
RETURN TO RADICALISM: After Obama took office, a number of GOP officials and candidates embraced "tentherism," the radical belief that everything from Medicare to Social Security to unemployment insurance to belonging to the United Nations violates the Constitution's Tenth Amendment. Until the "Pledge to America," however, it's been an open question whether the GOP as a whole would embrace this absurd viewpoint, or whether they would leave tenther rhetoric to fringe figures such as Michele Bachmann, Joe Miller or Sharron Angle. The first passage is a pledge to read the Constitution as a tenther document, putting essential programs like Social Security or Medicare on the chopping block. "The constitutional lunatics are now in charge of the GOP's asylum," writes CAP policy analyst Ian Millhiser. Ignoring immigration reform, the Pledge proposes an enforcement-only approach to immigration and appears to endorse and promote Arizona-like immigration policies. Given that 54 percent of all Americans regard the immigration issue as "very important" and that a majority of voters -- across party lines -- support immigration reform, "it's surprising the GOP didn't provide more details," the Wonk Room's Andrea Nill responds.
IGNORING AMERICA: Stripped of pablum, giveaways to lobbyists, and Bush-era ideas, little is left in the "Pledge to America." In fact, the "Republican Agenda" ignores some of the most essential challenges facing the United States. Global warming is nowhere to be found, even though this is the hottest year in recorded history. Even more remarkably, there is no plan for Iraq or Afghanistan. There is no mention of how Republicans plan to deal with either war and no acknowledgment that this year was the deadliest year in Afghanistan. Of the eight points in the plan devoted to national security, over half are devoted to keeping people out of America, indicating that the Republican House leadership simply doesn't know how it wants to engage the world. The agenda is supposedly the culmination of a project GOP lawmakers launched -- America Speaking Out -- which was designed to give the public a virtual platform to submit ideas and then vote on them. It may not be surprising that the Republicans ignored the highly popular ideas to decriminalize marijuana use, a ballot issue in five states this November. But they also deliberately ignored the most popular "job creation" idea, to "stop the outsourcing of jobs" by eliminating tax breaks for outsourcing companies.
The U.S. delegation walked out of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's U.N. speech yesterday after he said "most people believe the U.S. government was behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks" in order to "reverse the declining American economy" and "assure Israel's survival." The U.S. delegation said his "vile conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs" are as "abhorrent and delusional as they are predictable."
Dick Armey's FreedomWorks -- the right-wing group that has coordinated the tea party movement -- yesterday endorsed GOP U.S. Senate candidate in Alaska Joe Miller. And in another boost, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) "lashed out" at Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (R-AK) write-in bid against Miller and Democrat Scott McAdams, asking his supporters to donate money to Miller's campaign.
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) announced yesterday that she will be blocking the nomination of Jack Lew to direct the Office of Management and Budget until the Obama administration lifts its moratorium on offshore drilling. "I find it stunning that the administration was aware that their actions might eliminate nearly 23,000 jobs in an already faltering economy, and proceeded anyway," she said.
Yesterday, California's Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman said she would vote against Proposition 23, a ballot measure that would roll back California's landmark greenhouse-gas emissions law, AB 32. But Whitman also "reiterated her call for a one-year moratorium" of AB 32, attacking it as a "job-killer" and implying green jobs come at the expense of "the other 97% of jobs."
A new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says that the U.S. "is the fattest nation among 33 countries with advanced economies." Two-thirds of all Americans are overweight or obese while 72 million adults are obese — roughly 30 pounds overweight. "Obesity is a growing threat to public health in all the advanced countries throughout the world," an OECD spokesman said.
And finally: Rapper Kanye West has "finally broken his silence" over President Obama calling him a "jack--s" last year. "[I]f he said that to relate to the room or lighten the room up and the whole mood, then I'd be more than happy to be the butt of all of his jokes if it in the some way helps his overall mission," he said in a magazine interview.
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