Yep, they did it! House Republicans followed each other over the cliff, refusing to raise taxes even on the 0.2% of Americans earning more than $1 million per year. House Speaker John Boehner scuttled a vote on his (in)famous “Plan B” last night once it became clear that enough House Republicans opposed it that he couldn’t pass it.  This week Speaker Boehner broke off negotiations with President Obama in their effort to a prevent the U.S. economy from going over the “fiscal cliff” of massive tax increases coupled with massive spending cuts, claiming the President’s offer wasn’t a “balanced approach” of increased revenue matched with spending cuts. It was the typical Republican negotiating tactic of moving the goal posts – get the President to meet you halfway, and then moving the goalposts further and saying “now meet us halfway again, until we get everything we want”. The President campaigned and won on a pledge of letting tax rates increase back to Clinton era tax rates for income over $250,000 annually. In an effort to meet Republicans halfway he offered to raise that to $400,000, along with an offer strongly opposed by many in his own party to reduce Social Security benefits by changing the way increases tied to inflation is calculated. Obama also abandoned his demand for permanent borrowing authority. Instead, he proposed a new debt limit that would last two years, putting its renewal beyond the politics of a 2014 midterm election. Boehner’s sizable “my way or the highway” Teapublican right wing faction threatened an all out revolt if he even considered that proposal. So Boehner came up with his Plan B.

What was Speaker Boehner’s “Plan B”? It would raise income tax rates only for 0.2% of Americans, those earning over $1 million per year. But only that income over $1 million – it would permanently extend the Bush tax cuts for the first $1 million of income.  But that still wasn’t good enough for “my way or the highway” bunch. First they complained that it did nothing to prevent the “sequestration” cuts to defense -spending cuts they demanded and got in the summer of 2011 in exchange for what had previously been routine to raise the debt limit. So Boehner sweetened the deal, offering a measure to cancel the defense cuts and preventing any sequestration cuts for defense the President might order from having “any effect”. Still not enough for the Teapublican Grinch bunch.

“OK” Boehner said, “How about we take the food from hungry children’s mouths”? he asked.

Cuts of billions to food stamps that could knock millions of low-income Americans out of the program. Still not enough? Then how about we take the food from old people’s mouths as well? Cuts to Meals on Wheels, a program that delivers meals to seniors or other individuals who are unable to prepare their own food. What’s that you say? You still hate Obamacare? OK, we’ll throw in cuts to funding to health exchanges that will be created under Obamacare and funding for Medicaid included in the same law. Say what? Your too big to fail banking conglomerate backers are still crying about that Dodd-Frank financial reform law those socialist Democrats passed? OK, we’ll throw in cuts to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that will yield no cost savings, but will make bailouts of big banks more likely. Still don’t get that America’s fastest growing ethnic group doesn’t like you and vote increasingly heavily Democratic? Then let’s slip in denying the Child Tax Credit to the parents of American children, if the parents are undocumented immigrants.

Still not enough for ya? OK, yeah, we are making an estimated 440,000 Americans who make more than a million a year pay a little more in taxes, so let’s extract some retribution and raise taxes on millions of working poor and lower middle class! We won’t extend the expansions of the Child Tax Credit (CTC), that helps the working poor partially offset the cost of daycare for their under school age children so that they can actually work for a living! And let’s not extend expansion of the  Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and the American Opportunity Credit (AOC)! Not extending these programs will raise taxes between $1,000 and $1,500 on the working poor and lower middle class! It’s sheer brilliance!

But in the end it wasn’t enough and Speaker Boehner came up short. He and his Republican House leadership lobbied hard to win enough votes but they were out-lobbied, out-lobbied by outside special interest groups. A spokesman for the Club for Growth said that after it publicly issued a statement opposing Plan B on Wednesday afternoon representatives needed to make few phone calls on Thursday. “Members of Congress know we’re not afraid to get involved in a primary” said Club for Growth communications director Barney Keller. “Members know that the first thing we do is look to our scorecard, and decide who is a pro-growth vote and who isn’t. And we felt that to vote in favor of Boehner’s plan would be to vote for a tax increase, and against economic growth“.

And there you have the summary of our House Republican majority: controlled by fringe extremist groups that won’t allow a tax increase for even the wealthiest 0.2% of Americans. Republican Congressmen terrified of their chances for reelection if they stand up to them. Speaker Boehner recessed Congress until after Christmas. I hope they find a large lump of coal in their stockings. Happy Holidays to everyone else.

Are the Republican Congressional leaders purposely trying to sabotage the US economy for their own political gain?  I think it’s obvious – just look at their single most important item on their agenda:

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

- Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. Not jobs, not encouraging our economic recovery, not defeating Al Qaeda. Nope, making sure Americans don’t reelect President Obama is the single thing uppermost on their minds. In a recent article at The Guardian Michael Cohen points out the obvious:

The GOP’s zealotry on tax cuts is only matched by its zealotry in pursuing austerity policies. In the spring of 2011, federal spending cuts forced by Republican legislators took much-needed money out of the economy: combined with the 2012 budget, it has largely counteracted the positive benefits provided by the 2009 stimulus.

Republicans couldn’t stop the stimulus passed in 2009 when Democrats controlled Congress, so they’ve undone it with forced austerity since they took control of the House. “Austerity” – sound familiar? It’s austerity fiscal policy in Europe that has crashed their economy back into recession. The Republicans won control of the House in 2010 with their fake war cry of “out of control spending!”, when in fact growth in federal spending under President Obama has been much less than under Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.  And what has happened since the Republicans took control of the House?

Subsequently, the GOP’s refusal to countenance legislation that would help states with their own fiscal crises (largely, the result of declining tax revenue) has led to massive public sector layoffs at the state and local level. In fact, since Obama took office, state and local governments have shed 611,000 jobs; and by some measures, if not for these jobs cuts the unemployment rate today would be closer to 7%, not its current 8.2%. In 2010 and 2011, 457,00 public sector jobs were excised; not coincidentally, at the same time, much of the federal stimulus aid from 2009 ran out. And Republicans took over control of Congress.

The Republicans haven’t done a whole hell of a lot since they took control of the House, but what they have done has only harmed our economy, not helped. And their “crowning achievement” – pushing the country to the brink of default over raising the debt limit – which they raised repeatedly under Reagan and the two Bushes, no questions asked – was the single most damaging event to the economy since the financial crises of 2008 -

This collection of more-harm-than-good policies must also include last summer’s debt limit debacle, which House speaker John Boehner has threatened to renew this year. This was yet another GOP initiative that undermined the economic recovery. According to economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, “over the entire episode, confidence declined more than it did following the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc in 2008.” Only after the crisis did the consumer confidence stabilize, but employers “held back on hiring, sapping momentum from a recovery that remains far too fragile.” In addition, the debt limit deal also forced more unhelpful spending cuts on the country.

Since that national embarrassment, Republicans have refused to even allow votes on President Obama’s jobs bill in the Senate; they dragged their feet on the aforementioned payroll tax and even now are holding up a transportation bill with poison-pill demands for the White House on environmental regulation.

The Republicans don’t like it when voters put a Democrat in the White House, but they don’t get mad, they get even. Remember the national embarrassment when the Republicans shut down the federal government under President Clinton in 1995? Even the Grand Canyon was closed for business. And just 10 years ago, with George Bush in the White House and the economy was in a mild recession, these same Republicans were clamoring for fiscal stimulus to spur the economy.

Over the next 5 months you’ll see a lot of ads telling you the economy sucks and it’s all Obama’s and “rubber stamp” Democrats’ fault!  Elect Mitt Dudley Do Right Romney President and give us the Senate and we’ll come riding to the rescue!

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

Translation:

Such words lead some to the conclusion that Republicans will do anything, including short-circuiting the economy, in order to hurt Obama politically. Considering that presidents – and rarely opposition parties – are held electorally responsible for economic calamity, it’s not a bad political strategy.

No, not a bad political strategy – just bad for the economy, bad for you and me, bad for our fellow Americans. And we have a word for people who put their own self interest above the good of their country. Actually, a lot of choice words come to mind when I see what Republican Congressional leaders are doing.

Re-elect President Obama, elect Democrats to a majority in Congress, and get our country moving forward once again.