By their fruits ye shall know them.
That’s what Jesus said.
It’s not words, it’s not promises, it’s not slogans or associations.
It’s deeds.
That’s what shows the heart of a person. Not the promise they make in a time of ease, but the actions they take in a time of stress.
Like the vote on the Boehner bill.
It separates the wheat from the chaff in the Republican Party. It shows who is and who isn’t.
On the Boehner bill, the true believers stood their ground. The others caved. It was a test. Some passed. Some failed.
Those who stood with Boehner were wrong. Oh, the vote will help them in Washington. It undoubtedly curried for them some favor with the leadership and the lobbyists and the rest of the go-along-to-get-along crowd.
But it should doom them with Republicans who vote on principle.
Because Boehner abandoned principle.
And he didn’t even tell the truth.
Like the part where he says that his bill cuts spending by one dollar for every dollar of new borrowing authorized. That, he says, makes it revenue neutral.
Actually, it makes it status quo.
Or it would, if it were true.
Because in that dollar-for-dollar comparison, Boehner presumes we’re idiots. He apparently thinks that if he says something fast enough, and lets it go unpondered, that he can pull the wool over our eyes.
He thinks the books balance if you cut a dollar for every dollar you borrow. They don’t. See, when you borrow money, they have this thing called interest. It is a massive compounding portion of the debt.
Cutting spending by a dollar for every dollar you borrow still increases your net indebtedness because in addition to having to pay back that dollar, you have to pay back the interest on that dollar.
Boehner thinks we’re too stupid to realize that.
But lay that aside.
The fundamental flaw in Boehner’s bill is that it didn’t do anything. The cuts it outlined were inconsequential and not structural. They were window dressing.
A sop for idiots like you and me.
Yes, his never-going-to-happen six-month revisit of the issue would create a good issue to use against Obama and the Democrats next year, but ideally legislation is about something more substantive than the next election.
See, we already had an election.
The issue of the Boehner bill isn’t to be decided in the next election, it was decided in the last election. Some 80 new Republicans came to the House of Representatives, most of them because of promises they made to conservatives.
Boehner was the beneficiary of that. He is an accidental speaker, elevated to his office not for any great cause or platform he advanced, but because a social trend favored his party. He rode the wave, powerless to set its course or check its tide.
Not all the new Republicans understood that.
Because they have acted as if he was the master and they were the servant, when the truth is just the opposite.
Their confusion is not surprising. A cheering tea-party rally is a far different thing than a sit down in the Speaker’s Office. It is easier to stand for principle when hundreds applaud you for doing so than it is when it’s one-on-one with the guy who controls your fate in the House.
Some can pass that test, and some cannot.
Boehner failed by aiming too low. He failed by standing for expediency rather than principle.
And vainly do his defenders try to deflect blame onto the Democrats in the Senate or praise themselves for “changing the conversation.” We want legislation, not conversation. One is action, the other is hot air.
And Boehner offered hot air.
Yes, the apologists will point out that Democrats control the Senate and presidency. They will point to the other side and make excuses. The next election, they say, will be “the most important in history” and “we will get them then.” It all turns into a campaign ad where, oddly, the premise is, “Vote for us next year because we failed you this year.”
Well, we gave them the House last year, and they gave us the shaft.
Advancing a bill that had already been nixed by the Senate and the White House, Boehner still chose to take the low road. He chose to roughly approximate the Democrat position.
Last week, he floated a bill that let newly whipped Republicans hide behind a never-going-to-happen balanced-budget amendment. This week he apparently figured that charade would mollify the unwashed masses and he would be free to push his appeasement bill.
First the top Republican in the Senate suggested giving the president an open-ended debt cap with no spending cuts or promise of reform. Now the top Republican in the House suggests inconsequential cuts and no true reform of any kind.
It kind of makes you think that the Republican Party doesn’t get the big picture. Namely, that without conservative support, it is the perpetual minority party.
The Boehner bill is a test.
Look up your congressman’s vote, and grade it PASS or FAIL.
via BOEHNER BILL IS A TEST.
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