House Tea-Publicans jump off the cliff (again), vote for radical Ryan Budget 2.0

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

We are watching the slow suicide of a major political party. The Republican Party long ago ceased being the "Party of Lincoln," and as I have oft repeated, "this is not your father's GOP."

The Republican Party host has been hollowed out by its far-right extremist fringe parasites. All that remains of the GOP today are far-right radical extemists. And that poses a clear and present danger to the future of this country.

For all the talk in the media about "why can't we have compromise and find common ground solutions in the middle?," this is naive fantasy when one political party has dedicated itself to the destruction of government as its primary goal, and the destruction of its political opponents as the means to achieve it. We are living in troubling times.

Steve Benen writes, "A year ago, House Republicans linked arms, stepped off the cliff, and voted en masse for Paul Ryan's right-wing budget plan. GOP leaders demanded the support of nervous lawmakers, many of whom feared the party was overreaching just a few months into their term, and more than 98% of the caucus went along, as ordered." House Approves Radical GOP Budget Plan:

The blowback was far more intense than Republicans expected, especially given the fact that GOP lawmakers had voted to eliminate Medicare and replace it with a private voucher scheme.

A year later, it's happened again. The House this afternoon voted to approve Paul Ryan's new-but-not-improved budget plan, 228 to 191. As was the case in 2011, all House Democrats, including the Blue Dogs, opposed the far-right budget, but today, 10 House Republicans broke ranks and opposed the measure, up from 4 GOP members a year ago.

Of course, while it's noteworthy that 10 Republicans weren't willing to go along with their caucus on this — and in this group, 10 is a lot — the fact remains that 95% of the House GOP caucus went along with a budget plan that's so extreme, it would have been considered laughably ridiculous just a few years ago.

[L]et's not forget, this is a budget plan that ends Medicare's guaranteed benefit, takes health care coverage from millions of Americans, radically redistributes wealth in the wrong direction, slashes taxes on the very wealthy, and would "take food from poor children, make it harder for low-income students to get a college degree, and squeeze funding for research, education, and infrastructure."

And despite what you heard on the House floor if you watched the debate, the Ryan plan does not reduce the debt, either. It simply punishes the poor severely, in order to finance lavish tax breaks for the wealthy.

This is less a budget plan and more a right-wing fantasy. What's more in this election year, it's also an albatross.

* * *

Finally, let's also not forget that Republicans voted for this for no particular reason. I keep coming back to something Jonathan Bernstein recently explained: "[T]his isn't a vote that has to happen."

[I]f the Ryan budget passes the House, what happens next is … nothing. No Senate vote. No Congressionally-passed budget resolution. Nothing. And Ryan, and Speaker John Boehner, surely know it.

It is, as Stan Collender has been saying, a campaign document, nothing more. And yet it's a campaign document that Tea Partiers don't seem to want, and one that will saddle Members in competitive districts with easy-to-attack positions…. To tell the truth, I can't really think of any good precedent: a vote on something that neither the party's conservative or moderate wings wants to take on something that has no chance of advancing beyond that chamber. But Boehner and Ryan are asking Republican members to once again stick themselves with positions that you'll see in Democratic attack ads all the way through Election Day.

I suppose folks like Boehner and Cantor deserve some degree of credit. After all, they managed to convince 228 members of Congress to vote to kill Medicare in an election year. That's no easy task.

It is a descent into madness, the slow sucide of a major political party.