DownWithTyranny!

"One of my favorite old Kentucky sayings is there’s no education in the second kick of a mule. The first kick of a mule was when we shut the government down in the mid-1990s and the second kick was over the last 16 days," he said. "There is no education in the second kick of a mule. There will not be a government shutdown.

"I think we have fully now acquainted our new members with what a losing strategy that is," he added.

…McConnell said the deal he inked with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) Wednesday to open the government and raise the ceiling was the best that could be achieved given the GOP’s weak political position.

He compared it to a punt in football, giving Republicans a chance to resume the battle from a better position next year.

"By the time I came in yesterday it was clear to me that it was up to me to get us out of the government shutdown and make sure we didn’t default," he said of his decision to take over the negotiations, after it became apparent the House could not pass legislation that could also pass the Senate.

McConnell told his colleagues in a private meeting that they needed to escape a precarious political situation to push for spending and entitlement program reforms next year, when they will be in a position of greater strength.

"So I met with my members. I said, 'Look, I think we all know I have a weak hand here,'" McConnell said. "I’m on my own two-yard line. The offensive line is a little shaky, and what best I think we can do is get off a punt here to try to get into a better field position."

…Some conservatives have criticized the deal harshly for failing to defund or make a major reform to ObamaCare, and 18 Republicans senators voted against it Wednesday.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) praised McConnell Wednesday for risking a political backlash from his base when he faces a primary challenger in 2014.

"My hat goes off to Sen. McConnell. He’s in a very difficult situation politically," Schumer told reporters.

"His role in this could be a disaster for him politically," said Justin Barasky, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "This hurts him in the primary.

"The right is even more emboldened to go after him," he added.

But McConnell sees a political advantage. He think the deal cuts the bottom out of the message of his likely general-election opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, who has assailed the GOP leader as an obstructionist.

"This has been a bad 24 hours for her because her whole narrative, her whole campaign is to try to paint me as a guy who is kind of a guardian for gridlock here in Washington," McConnell said.

A new Democratic poll conducted by Public Policy Polling for the liberal advocacy group Americans United for Change shows Grimes leading McConnell by two points, 45 percent to 43.

"This is the fourth time that I’ve stepped up to prevent catastrophic occurrence in our country," McConnell said, noting his role in deals to extend virtually all of the Bush-era tax cuts at the end of 2010, the Budget Control Act of 2011, and the fiscal-cliff deal of Jan. 1, 2013, which made most of the Bush tax cuts permanent.

Republicans have still not offered to pay back the $24 billion they wasted

As many people have been pointing out, the economic costs of GOP attempts to rule by extortion didn’t begin with the shutdown/debt crisis, and haven’t ended with the (temporary?) resolution of that crisis. The now widely-cited Macroeconomic Advisers report estimated the cost of crisis-driven fiscal policy at 1 percentage point off the growth rate for three years, or roughly 3 percent now. More than half of this estimated cost comes from the “fiscal drag” of falling discretionary spending, with the rest coming from a (shaky) estimate of the impacts of fiscal uncertainty on borrowing costs.

…[T]here are two important aspects of the story that MA leaves out.

First, part of the fiscal cliff deal involved letting the Obama payroll tax cut-- a significant, useful form of economic stimulus-- expire. (Republicans only like tax cuts that go to people with high incomes.) This led to a surprisingly large tax hike in 2013, focused on workers:

Second, GOP opposition to unemployment insurance has been the biggest factor in a very rapid decline in unemployment benefits despite continuing weak job markets:

This hurts the unemployed a lot, but it also hurts the economy, because the unemployed are already living on the edge, and surely must have been forced into spending cuts as benefits expired.

The combination of the payroll take hike and the benefit cuts amounts to about $200 billion of fiscal contraction at an annual rate, or 1.25 percent of GDP, probably with a significant multiplier effect. Add this to the effects of sharp cuts in discretionary spending and the effects of economic uncertainty, however measured, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that extortion tactics may have shaved as much as 4 percent off GDP and added 2 points to the unemployment rate.

In other words, we’d be looking at a vastly healthier economy if it weren’t for the GOP takeover of the House in 2010.

"We know that families have gone without paychecks or services they depend on. We know that potential homebuyers have gotten fewer mortgages, and small business loans have been put on hold. We know that consumers have cut back on spending, and that half of all CEOs say that the shutdown and the threat of shutdown set back their plans to hire over the next six months. We know that just the threat of default-- of America not paying all the bills that we owe on time-- increased our borrowing costs, which adds to our deficit.

And, of course, we know that the American people’s frustration with what goes on in this town has never been higher. That's not a surprise that the American people are completely fed up with Washington. At a moment when our economic recovery demands more jobs, more momentum, we've got yet another self-inflicted crisis that set our economy back. And for what? There was no economic rationale for all of this. Over the past four years, our economy has been growing, our businesses have been creating jobs, and our deficits have been cut in half. We hear some members who pushed for the shutdown say they were doing it to save the American economy-- but nothing has done more to undermine our economy these past three years than the kind of tactics that create these manufactured crises.

And you don’t have to take my word for it. The agency that put America’s credit rating on watch the other day explicitly cited all of this, saying that our economy “remains more dynamic and resilient” than other advanced economies, and that the only thing putting us at risk is-- and I'm quoting here-- “repeated brinksmanship.” That's what the credit rating agency said. That wasn’t a political statement; that was an analysis of what’s hurting our economy by people whose job it is to analyze these things.

That also happens to be the view of our diplomats who’ve been hearing from their counterparts internationally. Some of the same folks who pushed for the shutdown and threatened default claim their actions were needed to get America back on the right track, to make sure we're strong. But probably nothing has done more damage to America's credibility in the world, our standing with other countries, than the spectacle that we've seen these past several weeks. It's encouraged our enemies. It's emboldened our competitors. And it's depressed our friends who look to us for steady leadership.

What do you make of this Vitter Amendment?

I think that only those Republicans who were determined to shut down the government should have their healthcare benefits cut. Not the rest of us.

And the drive to take benefits away from congressional staffers?

We have always had staffers get the same benefits as other federal employees. They are federal employees. I’ve never understood the logic of abandoning that principle.

What would you say to the Republican staffers who could be affected by this?

That they’re fools and they work for fools.

What’s revealed by the fact that we’re now talking about opening the government and raising the debt ceiling in exchange in part for getting rid of the portion of people’s compensation that goes to health insurance?

What it shows is that the Tea Party emperor has no clothes-- that they never should have, or could have, forced their idiocy on the other house of Congress, or the other branches of government. That their blackmail and extortion and coercion has been recognized for exactly what it is. It’s never made any sort of sense or had any moral strength to say to America, as they’ve said, “If you don’t let us steal your car, we will burn down your house.” They tried to steal the car, which was Obamacare, under threat of burning down the house, which is the U.S. economy. That was always wrong, it’s still wrong. It’s always gonna be wrong. The sad thing is that they were able to extort the concessions that they’ve already received with those kinds of tactics, such as the fact that they took the president’s budget, cut it by 20 per cent, and then threw it in the trash can.

If the portion of congressional staffers’ compensation for health insurance were taken away, how do you think that would affect who comes to work in the House?

Well, I know what the Tea Party would say… They would say that denying healthcare benefits to congressional staffers ensures that we will have a healthy staff. That’s Tea Party logic for you.

And what would you say?

I would say that it’s torturing people who work very hard, for very long hours, and for at best modest pay-- almost all of whom could be earning more in the private sector-- for the sake of some kind of twisted symbolism that only Tea Party fanatics can understand.

Do you think it’s necessary at this point, in order to keep the government open and avoid a default, to give the Republicans some sort of fig leaf at least that they could claim as a concession?

I think the president’s got this exactly right: We don’t bargain over whether the government does its job. We don’t bargain over whether the government pays its debt… It shows an utter disrespect for the law itself, and a sick love of chaos and despair, to drag us down into the mud this way and keep people from getting the benefits that they’re legally entitled to.

If it comes down to it, are you willing to vote for something that has other policy language besides opening the government and/or raising the debt ceiling?

Every proposal will get considered on the merits. That is too broad a question for me to answer-- I have to see it first. I’ll know it when I see it. But it should never have come to this.

This discussion of additional income verification under the ACA, what do you make of that?

It’s an effort analogous to the Republicans’ voter suppression efforts: now they’re getting into health suppression. They’re trying to do whatever they can to block people who do qualify…from getting that health coverage by throwing up bureaucratic roadblocks in their way.

And delay of this reinsurance tax that some unions and businesses have objected to reportedly being in the Senate deal-- almost momentarily-- and then taken out again, what do you make of that?

I think that it was meant to address one of the flaws from the unions’ perspective in the arrangements that we’re making for healthcare… Because it would have benefited union members, the Republicans were against it, despite the fact that it’s entirely just on the merits, and there’s no reason that we should discriminate among union members and non-union members when we’re talking about affordability credits.

What about the push to delay or remove the device tax? It’s an example of the lengths to which Republicans are willing to go in order to give payoffs to their corporate donors. I have characterized many Republicans as corporate shills, and this demonstrates that as well as anything I can imagine. The Republicans are insisting on keeping the government shut down and forcing the government into default in order to be able to deliver a benny-- short for a benefit-- a benny to a corporate special interest.

What does that suggest then about the Democrats who have backed getting rid of the device tax?

I think you’d have to ask them that question. I don’t know what’s on their minds. I do know what’s on the minds of the Republicans, because all you have to do is check their FEC [fundraising] reports.

So when we hit midnight Thursday night what is going to have happened?

I don’t know. But I do know that this will prove once and for all, beyond any doubt, that the Tea Party and the Republican Party are agents of chaos. And they are completely unsuited to participating in government.

Are you suggesting the voters will prevent it from happening again?

The voters will prevent this from happening again. Even a dog knows when it’s being kicked.

How will they do that?

By voting the Republicans out of power and relegating the Republican Party to the ash heap of history.

Does that mean a new era of liberal legislation out of Washington?

I don’t know. You know, eventually the Whig Party was replaced to some degree by the Republican Party. I don’t know what’s going to replace the Republican Party. I just hope that it’s more benign and less malignant. What about if there’s a deal in the next couple days?

It’s irrelevant. They keep dragging America into heavy traffic. They’ve done this over and over again. The fact that there’s some kind of temporary deal until December or January doesn’t change the fact that they are anarchists. To the extent that responsible people want to continue having our society function, the Republicans will have to be rejected. They’ll have to be expelled from the body politic.

Even though the Congressional Progressive Caucus is the largest caucus among Democrats, there’s a perception that when push comes to shove-- whether it’s on the Affordable Care Act or the fiscal cliff deal-- that the progressives aren’t really able to extract concessions. That in the end, once there’s a deal, the progressives-- unlike some of the Tea Party members-- will go along with whatever the leadership has come up with, or give John Boehner the votes to pass something like a fiscal cliff deal or raise the debt ceiling. Do you think that’s fair?

No. I think you’re vastly overgeneralizing… The reason why the Progressive Caucus voted for the Affordable Care Act was because it saved lives and it saved money. The Affordable Care Act was progressive… that’s why the Tea Party is so desperate to eliminate it…

I think the Progressive Caucus hasn’t shown the willingness to inflict pain on other people that the Tea Party has shown. The Progressive Caucus won’t torpedo constructive, productive, progressive legislation because it’s not good enough. But I don’t think that that’s somehow a criticism of the caucus. I think that shows the caucus knows how to get what it’s trying to get-- it knows how to get to yes.

Assuming the government opens up again and the debt ceiling is raised, how concerned are you that we’re going to see cuts to Medicare benefits and/or Social Security benefits afterwards?

Well, the possibility of a Great Betrayal has raised its ugly head again. I’m not going to call it a “Grand Bargain”-- I know other people do. And I guess every time, it’s going to be like a game of whack-a-mole: there are vast corporate interests and right-wing ideologues who want to privatize Social Security, and they want to voucherize Medicare. And they want to do that because they’re going to make staggering amounts from doing so…I guess they’re going to keep trying, and I guess we’ll have to keep beating them.

I gave 3 million signatures on a petition to the White House a few months ago…demonstrating the public doesn’t want to see cuts…if you poll it, it’s overwhelmingly true.

The public just doesn’t want it. I mean, if we’re still a functioning democracy, then any effort at cutting these benefits should be shot down. And it probably will be shot down…The guy who ran against me last year said in a debate, he said that he wanted to raise the retirement age to 70 or 72. And he got 37 per cent of the vote, and I got 63.

Do you think progressives can get the president to back down on cutting Social Security or Medicare?

I think the public will. I mean, the public spoke vehemently against military intervention in Syria, and if necessary, the public will speak vehemently against any great betrayal of their earned benefits for Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

If the end of this shutdown is that Republicans get a change to the medical device tax, can they reasonably call that a victory?

No, not unless they’ve completely lost touch with reality. The only ones they can claim victory to in that regard would be the corporate lobbyists that pay them to obtain that kind of win. But in any larger and more general sense, they haven’t won-- they’ve lost.

They’ve for one thing tortured close to a million federal employees who deserve better treatment than this. For another, they’ve wasted staggering amounts of money… For another, they have stuck a knife into the economy… They have created chaos in the financial markets. They have substantially undermined consumer sentiment. And they’ve revealed themselves to be utterly incompetent when it comes to being a governing party. I mean, if they regard that as a plus, then that as much as anything shows how out of touch they are with reality, and how little they deserve to be part of government.

How concerned are you that there would be a debt default at this point?

I’m concerned. You know, the president has made it clear that the debt ceiling needs to be increased or we’re likely to default. I take his word for it. I wish that he would declare the debt ceiling unconstitutional, but he has said that he is presently inclined against that approach. I hope he changes his mind… In a Reuters op-ed piece a few days ago, I pointed out that you could easily avoid this entire problem if the Federal Reserve simply wrote off its treasury debt… The letter that I sent to Chairman Bernanke has gone unanswered…

The Republicans seem to be bent on destroying the credit of the United States. They actually want that to happen as far as I can tell. There was an interesting ABC/Washington Post poll where we got the crosstabs… 31 per cent of Republicans thought that breaching the debt ceiling would cause serious economic harm, and they wanted to do it anyway. So yes, all of that makes me concerned. We have a significant part of the population that seems to have a financial death wish, and I’m concerned that they’re going to drag us down with the rest of them.

Senator Ron Johnson said to me that not raising the debt ceiling “doesn’t have to be a crisis,” because you can prioritize payments. What do you make of that?

They’re proving that they’re economic illiterates. I mean, even if you prioritized payments, you would immediately be reducing the GNP by 4 percent overnight. It’s just a matter of arithmetic…and this is before you get into the multiplier effects… I can’t believe that in this day and age, people would think that if the government goes suddenly from borrowing $50 billion a month to borrowing zero, that that has no macroeconomic effect.

The language Republicans have proposed where the debt ceiling would be raised but the Treasury would be specifically prohibited from using so-called “extraordinary measures” to avoid a default-- are there any circumstances under which you would vote for something that had that language?

I don’t know… I’d like to see how it’s worded, and what it’s in the context of, and what are the tradeoffs. But the fact is, they’re like children putting their hands …on a hot stove. They don’t even know what these extraordinary measures are, and they want to cut them off… I’m sure they don’t know. But whatever it is that they don’t know, they want to stop them.

Mica & Lankford: 2 ugly right-wing faces of GOP nihilism & cowardice

While unreconstructed Confederate nihilists like Louisiana's John Fleming were boasting this morning that they're ready to force another government shutdown in January and another default crisis in February, many Republicans from normal parts of America were breathing a sigh of relief after last night's Pelosi-led 285-144 vote to reopen the government and step back from the brink of default. Charlie Dent (R-PA) explained the cowardly strategy of most Republicans in this nifty aphorism floating around Capitol Hill: "Hope Yes/Vote No."

Most people recognize that for what it is: grotesque political appeasement to the Tea Party Confederates-- and it will come back to hurt Republicans who voted NO while representing districts where independent voters are needed for reelection. In the House, 16 who may have wrecked their chances for reelection by going along with the Hope Yes/Vote No strategy:

• Justin Amash (MI)
• Kerry Bentivolio (MI)
• Jeff Denham (CA)
• Sean Duffy (WI)
• Scott Garrett (NJ)
• Steve King (IA)
• John Mica (FL)
• Stevan Pearce (NM)
• Joe Pitts (PA)
• Tom Reed (NY)
• Dana Rohrabacher (CA)
• Ed Royce (CA)
• Paul Ryan (WI)
• Steve Southerland (FL)
• Mike Turner (OH)
• Tim Walberg (MI)

Problem here, of course, is that the DCCC hasn't bothered finding candidates to run in many of these races or isn't backing the grassroots local candidate who is running or is putting up some less-of-two evils hack who many voters won't bother going to the polls to support.

Let's take John Mica. His central Florida district, FL-07, stretches from the suburbs just north of Orlando, like Winter Park and Altamonte Springs and then up through Longwood, Geneva, Deltona and Orange City. The district has a PVI of R+4 but Obama nearly beat McCain in 2008 (50-49%) and held Romney to 52% last year. There's a growing Hispanic community-- 20% now-- and voters are getting tired of Mica's sleazy dishonesty and cowardice. Wednesday night he voted with the minority of Congress to send the country into default and keep the government shut down. That isn't what central Florida residents wanted to see. The DCCC isn't supporting Mica's progressive and independent-minded Democratic opponent, Nick Ruiz. Blue America is. This morning, Nick wasn't feeling all that charitable towards Mica and said flat out that he "has no business being in representative government. He doesn't want government, clearly evinced by his repeated votes to shut it down. Rep. Mica doesn't want to cooperate and represent the district and the nation. What Mr. Mica wants is total control of the lives and circumstances of the district and the nation. There's a word for this, but it isn't 'representation.' It's megalomania."

Another Blue America-endorsed candidate, Tom Guild, is in a much tougher district. Oklahoma has been a conservative Republican bastion for decades. And Tom is a progressive Democrat, not a Blue Dog or New Dem type. The DCCC is ignoring his race but Oklahoma City may not be as set against change as many Inside the Beltway assume it is. After the vote last night, Tom drew a clear distinction between where he stands and how his Tea Party-oriented opponent, Jim Lankford, voted:

The good news is that the our long national nightmare is temporarily over. The government will reopen, and the country won't default, at least until February. However, radical Rep. James Lankford recklessly voted against reopening the government, and irresponsibly voted against the bill that kept the country from defaulting on our obligations. Once again, he proved that he is totally disconnected from reality. He had already cost us 900,000 jobs, and $24 billion in economic activity by his penchant for repeating failed policies and approaches. He proves Sen. Manchin's view that the biggest threat to the American economy is the American Congress, particularly the radical and completely out of touch GOP House.

“Mike Fitzpatrick stood around doing nothing effective or proactive for sixteen days. During that time, the U.S. economy lost 100,000 jobs and, according to Standard and Poor’s, we cut about 0.6 percent off of our gross domestic product. That’s equivalent to $24 billion in lost productivity.

“I’m sure Congressman Fitzpatrick would like to be welcomed home a hero, but I refuse to applaud someone for putting out a fire he started.

“The shutdown was a malicious, self-destructive act designed to undermine a law that was passed by Congress, signed by the president, and approved by the Supreme Court. And Congressman Fitzpatrick was complicit in its execution. He ought to be ashamed of himself. He owes the entire Eighth Congressional District an apology.

“Not once did he hold a town hall meeting or explain himself to his constituents. Not once did he take a principled stand on behalf of the people he represents. He timidly stood on the sidelines, doing what Tea Party leaders in the house told him to do, never once thinking about the impact he was having back home.

“If ever there was a reason to evict Congressman Fitzpatrick, this was it. People have had it with his brand of do-nothing politics. Leadership is needed and it’s time for him to go.”

When will Mike get to unpack his costume?

• Dean Heller (R-NV)
• Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
• Ron Johnson (R-WI)
• Pat Toomey (R-PA)

• Justin Amash (MI)
• Kerry Bentivolio (MI)
• Jeff Denham (CA)
• Sean Duffy (WI)
• Scott Garrett (NJ)
• Steve King (IA)
• John Mica (FL)
• Stevan Pearce (NM)
• Joe Pitts (PA)
• Tom Reed (NY)
• Dana Rohrabacher (CA)
• Ed Royce (CA)
• Paul Ryan (WI)
• Steve Southerland (FL)
• Mike Turner (OH)
• Tim Walberg (MI)

I'm glad that the government shutdown has ended, and I'm relieved that we didn't default on our debt.

But I want to be clear: I am NOT celebrating tonight.

Yes, we prevented an economic catastrophe that would have put a huge hole in our fragile economic recovery. But the reason we were in this mess in the first place is that a reckless faction in Congress took the government and the economy hostage for no good purpose and to no productive end.

According to the S&P index, the government shutdown had delivered a powerful blow to the U.S. economy. By their estimates, $24 billion has been flushed down the drain for a completely unnecessary political stunt.

$24 billion dollars. How many children could have been back in Head Start classes? How many seniors could have had a hot lunch through Meals on Wheels? How many scientists could have gotten their research funded? How many bridges could have been repaired and trains upgraded?

The Republicans keep saying, "Leave the sequester in place and cut all those budgets." They keep trying to cut funding for the things that would help us build a future. But they are ready to flush away $24 billion on a political stunt.

So I'm relieved, but I'm also pretty angry.

We have serious problems that need to be fixed, and we have hard choices to make about taxes and spending. I hope we never see our country flush money away like this again. Not ever.

It's time for the hostage taking to end. It's time for every one of us to say, "No more."

A new high of 74 percent of Americans disapprove of the way the Republicans in Congress are handling Washington’s budget crisis, up significantly in the past two weeks and far exceeding disapproval of both President Obama and congressional Democrats on the issue.

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that criticism of the GOP’s handling of the budget dispute has grown by 11 percentage points since just before the partial government shutdown began, from 63 to 70 and now 74 percent-- clearly leaving the party with the lion’s share of blame. Indeed 54 percent now “strongly” disapprove.

A liberal group based in Harrisburg will fan out across the state and into the Philadelphia suburbs Tuesday to try to put pressure on Republicans in Congress toward ending the federal government shutdown.

Michael Morrill, executive director of Keystone Progress, said hundreds of people will place "cease and desist" posters outside the district offices of House Republicans, placing the blame on them.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has called the protest a partisan stunt that ignores efforts by Pennsylvania's GOP House members to end the impasse. While Keystone Progress prepared for the demonstrations, Senate leaders in Washington said they were closing in on a deal.

The targets include Reps. Mike Fitzpatrick, who represents Bucks County, and Jim Gerlach and Patrick Meehan, whose districts stretch across swaths of Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties. Keystone Progress wants them to end the shutdown by voting for a "clean" bill that raises the debt ceiling and does not attempt to defund the Affordable Care Act.

…"We've got members of Congress who are doing two things: either ignoring the reality of what's happening financially or playing word games," Morrill said. "In the case of congressmen like Fitzpatrick, they're saying they're opposed to the shutdown and don't want the country to go into default. But they're not taking any actions to follow up."

Responding to the planned demonstration, Fitzpatrick said, "People want the government back open, as do I. While I do not like how we got here, now is the time to focus on putting our country back on the right fiscal path."

…"These protests should be taken with a big grain of salt," Prior said. "Most Pennsylvania voters are trying to support a family. They aren't taking Tuesdays off of work to attend political rallies."