Today President Biden signed the legislation to suspend the debt ceiling for two years to avoid a default by the United States on paying its obligations. Such a default would have had catastrophic consequences for the United States and the world. It would have had an adverse effect on virtually every citizen. Even now, that the crisis has been averted, the Fitch bond rating agency is still talking about possibly downgrading the credit rating of the United States because of this continued brinksmanship regarding the budget.
None of this needed to happen. It was a self-inflicted ‘crisis’ forced on the country by Republicans who, in my opinion, were nothing more than economic terrorists who were basically holding the country and Biden hostage to extract things they could not achieve through the normal legislative process. Everyone seems to conveniently forget that the Republicans raised the debt ceiling three times under Trump with no issue whatsoever. And the fact is that the national debt increased by over 7 trillion dollars during the Trump administration primarily due to the tax cuts that ultimately benefitted the wealthy and corporations. The national debt has actually come down almost 2 trillion dollars under Biden. But since when did facts matter in politics?
As I was watching this crime of extortion play out, it struck me that these days its hard to find many things that the Republicans are actually for. They seem to be against more things than they are for. They are always for cutting taxes and we know they love their guns!! But overall, they seem to be against just about everything else.
They are against abortion, and, in the same breath, they are against expanding the social services that will be required to deal with this issue. They are against transgender care for kids regardless of the parents and medical professionals’ opinions and wishes. They are against books they deem inappropriate. They are against fairly drawn voting districts (which I guess means they are for gerrymandering!). They are against expanding voting rights and instead continue to try to pass laws to curb voting rights. They are against any laws that help to regulate industries that contribute to the climate crisis. Many of the current Republican rabble in Congress are against any kind of compromise. Some Republicans are against Social Security and Medicare. The list goes on and on.
I have decided the party once known historically as the Grand Old Party (GOP) is really the Great Obstructionist Party. I don’t know how you can come to any other conclusion. The fact is, I think some of these Republicans are actually against democracy. Given that the Conservative Political Action Conference was once again held in Hungary with Viktor Orban as a keynote speaker, one can only conclude they figure the ‘illiberal democracy’ that Orban pushes (which is looking more and more like downright fascism) is the kind of government they want!
Many of these Republicans talk about wanting ‘originalist’ judges on the Federal bench, i.e., those judges who interpret the law in the context of what the Founding Fathers meant when they wrote the Constitution. Since many of the Founding Fathers were, in fact, slave owners, and women couldn’t vote, etc., I wonder if this desire to have originalist judges is just a subtle way of saying that they want to go back to those ‘good old days’? Who the hell came up with this ‘equality’ crap anyway?
Yes, I think the Great Obstructionist Party is the right moniker. And it’s only going to get worse.
