Republicans Get a Taste of Their Own Medicine

Sorry for the shameless pun, but I could not help myself.

Now that House Republicans have officially gone on the record (and soon to come in the Senate as well) for their full throated support of trillions in tax cuts for plutocrats and corporations and abolishing Medicare, it turns out that their constituents are a little agitated. Who'd have thought? Here are just some of the recent highlights:

CONSTITUENT: I hear you saying two contradictory things about taxes. One you want to reform the tax code so that corporations to pay more, and two you don’t want corporations to pay so much so that they’ll somehow stimulate business. So I don’t understand that contradiction. The CBO […] the Ryan program proposes to turn Medicare into a voucher program.

DUFFY: It doesn’t, No it doesn’t.

DIFFERENT CONSTITUENT: Yes it does.

DUFFY: No, it doesn’t there’s no voucher.

CONSTITUENT: That’s what my understanding of what it is.

DUFFY: No.

CONSTITUENT: They count the cost to seniors if it goes into a voucher program, it’s going to be trillions of dollars for those young men like this guy in front.

DUFFY: It’s a premium support it’s not a voucher. The bottom line is if we do nothing, if we do nothing, you can all say this is all fine and dandy, you can get it and I know any young people here you can all get this program.

CONSTITUENT: I agree that if we do nothing we’re in trouble, that’s why we have to raise taxes on the rich, and raise taxes on the corporations who have never been richer than they have now. And you guys just cut their taxes again.

ANOTHER CONSTITUENT: Oh, Yeah!

DUFFY: When you say cutting taxes, if taxes maintain the same level and rate is that a tax cut.

CONSTITUENT: To maintain the same level that was long ago, that was sold on the premise of creating jobs by giving more money to the wealthy.

OTHER CONSTITUENTS: Yeah! [inaudible]

And more win from a different Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) town hall:

CONSTITUENT: I’d like to know where you get your information, where those projections come from?

DUFFY: That’s also from the CBO.

CONSTITUENT: No, no, no, no, no. Did you get any information from the Heritage Foundation?

DUFFY: [...] This is OMB and CBO.

CONSTITUENT: Show me how the Ryan budget that you just voted for brings down the deficit.

DUFFY: I don’t have the chart here. [...]

CONSTITUENT: [...] I know what chart you used, it came from the Heritage Foundation, from a man named William W. Beach, he’s lying. It’s a fraud. [...] A Nobel Prize-winning economist labeled it a fraud! [referring to Paul Krugman]

And finally, this ThinkProgress video of a town hall held by GOP Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL):

I love the "Liar - Goddamned Liar!" It's refreshing to hear people speak the truth since such unvarnished statements are rarely spoken on policy issues, and never by the media. Now I can't speak to the politics of the constituents at these town halls, but I get the distinct feeling that not even the batshit base of the Republican party can't swallow the abomination that is the Ryan budget. The GOP has severely overreached here, and they were too goddamned stupid and drunk with power to realize it. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are enormously popular with the public, as is raising taxes on those best equipped to pay them. They should have seen the writing on the wall in Wisconsin; people are waking up to what it feels like (or might look like) to get good and proper fucked at the hands of corrupt Republican oligarchs. And these are real 'murikans if you will, not the Koch/FreedomWorks/Crossroads GPS funded corporate shills that showed up in droves screaming to keep gubmint outta mah Medicare during the Affordable Care Act debate.

Harry Reid is right to force a vote on this issue in the Senate. I can only hope that Republican senators are actually stupid enough to support the Ryan budget in the upper chamber, and I'm sure they will. They value ideological purity and party loyalty over politics or the actual needs of their constituents, because they (like many politicians) do not go to DC to serve their constituents, but rather to ingratiate themselves, reward their campaign donors, and to make sure they've got a cushy seven figure job lined up in the private sector that they coddled with their corporatist policies during their tenure on Capitol Hill. This will be an enormous campaign issue in 2012 that should reap significant Democratic gains, if the Democrats don't manage to fuck it up that is.