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This sneering, preening performance by the new Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, yesterday on Fox News really set me off, for some reason. As you can see, it's all about blaming Democrats for the state of the economy, insisting that they are somehow responsible for the ballooning federal deficit and the need to raise the debt ceiling. That's the thrust of the RNC's latest round of Obama-bashing ads.

You certainly can't say they lack for chutzpah.

Look, this meme has been building ever since the Tea Partiers started raging about the deficit and the debt, and now it's the official Republican talking point. It all makes me want to ask:

Where do you guys get the balls to lecture Democrats about deficit spending and the state of the economy?

Seriously.

The previous Democratic president -- a guy named Bill Clinton, who Republicans hounded with a meaningless sex scandal -- handed off to his Republican successor a $46 billion federal surplus after having erased the deficit for three successive years.

That surplus disappeared the first year George W. Bush was in office, even before the 9/11 attacks happened, in no small part because Bush began slashing taxes for the wealthy immediately upon taking office. And then he and his Republican allies running the Congress proceeded to ring up the deficit to unheard-of heights, thanks largely to a needless invasion of another nation under false pretenses.

Where were all these Republicans in the years 2001-2006, when they were setting new records for federal deficits and destroying the economy along the way?

And then blaming Obama and the Democrats for lost jobs really takes the cake. It's undoubtedly true that Obama's policies have not restored jobs in anything near an adequate fashion. But those millions of jobs were destroyed on Republicans' economic watch, as a result of Republican economic policies.

Fixing the economy is indeed a much bigger uphill climb than the Pollyannas on the White House economic team reckoned. But Republicans have done nothing but make it harder, by obstructing every Democratic initiative to stimulate the economy and improve our economic competitiveness (which was what the health-care debate was largely about), not to mention the employment picture generally.

Indeed, it's now becoming crystal clear that they are perfectly willing to wreck the American economy entirely in order to defeat Obama's economic policies, such as they are. And at the same time, they not only plan to blame Obama for the wreckage, they are already doing so.

Remind me again why our president is deluded into believing he can bargain in good faith with these people.

OK, rant over.

We've remarked from the get-go that the most remarkable thing about the Tea Partying Republican Right is that they represent a political bloc predicated on people believing things that are provably untrue. This has, of course, ranged from the Birth Certificate nonsense to the belief that Obama is going to take everyone's guns away, and everything in between.

But these are in many ways secondary add-ons to Tea Partyism, whose core mantra really revolves around the federal deficit and spending: We're on the verge of bankruptcy, they claim, and it's being caused by "out-of-control" federal spending.

In the video above, Van Jones -- who knows all about right-wing lies -- deconstructs the Really Big Lie that is a cornerstone of Tea Party beliefs, not to mention right-wing media talking points, namely: We're going broke.

We're not.

Meanwhile, Brian Beutler at TPMDC deconstructs the claim that "federal spending is out of control":

But a close look at the numbers reveals a few important, and frequently overlooked facts. Domestic discretionary spending is a small sliver of the budget. Our deficit and debts can be traced to the fact that spending on entitlement programs and defense has shot up, and tax revenues have plummeted to their lowest level in decades. But spending on domestic discretionary programs has grown much more slowly. And, if you correct for inflation, and for growing population, it turns out we're spending exactly the same amount on these programs as we were a full decade ago.

These numbers come from Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee, who are doing their best to guard this turf.

"Although non-defense discretionary spending in nominal dollars has increased, when taking inflation and population growth into account the amount contained in the [2011 budget] represents no increase over what we spent in 2001, a year in which we generated a surplus of $128 billion," said chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI) in a prepared statement. "So the right question to ask is: Are we really spending too much on non-defense programs? The answer is clearly no."

Beutler provides some graphic illustrations of the reality behind the numbers that make it clear, as he suggests, just who the chief culprit in this matter really is: right-wing governance and its mania for cutting taxes.

In the wake of the Bush tax cuts, and the Great Recession, tax revenue has fallen through the floor to near-historic lows. As a percentage of GDP, it's fallen 24 percent since 2001, and if you correct for inflation, the government is collecting nearly 20 percent less per person than it was a decade ago. At the same time, the population-adjusted costs of mandatory spending programs -- driven by Medicare, including its new prescription drug benefit, and Medicaid -- have increased by over 30 percent. And, of course, defense spending has skyrocketed. But if you isolate domestic discretionary programs, a decade later we're spending no more on a per-person basis than we were back then.

Meanwhile, Robert Reich explains all this in detail:

Yes, it's true: Right-wing ideology is increasingly built on a foundation of lies.

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President Obama Addresses the Nation on the Debt Ceiling **
** This mythical address, of course, never occurred. But something like it should have happened a long time ago.

(As Prepared But Never Delivered, July 1, 2011.)

My fellow Americans,

I want to speak to you today about a matter of the greatest national urgency. We face a crisis unique in our history. This threat comes not from a foreign foe or bloodthirsty terrorists, but is no less dangerous and insidious. No, this challenge to the American way of life comes entirely from within. And the damage it could cause is as catastrophic as it is unnecessary.

I am speaking about the looming deadline to raise the debt ceiling of the United States.

On or about August 2nd, the government of the United States will hit the $14.3 trillion limit on its debt. Never in our 235 year history has the United States of America defaulted on its financial obligations. Never has Congress failed to raise the debt ceiling in a timely manner. Never has Congress put the full faith and credit of the United States in jeopardy.

Until now.

In an act of reckless and unprecedented partisanship, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress have promised to block the needed increase in the debt ceiling unless an ever-shifting - and escalating - series of demands are met. At a time when this nation is fighting two wars and slowly emerging from its deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, only now are Republicans demanding trillions in spending cuts which would slow our recovery, cost hundreds of thousands of jobs, and undermine our social safety net. Republicans insist that any new revenue from any source, even by closing tax loopholes for the wealthiest individuals and most profitable corporation in America, is "off the table."

If those demands are unmet, the same Republican Party which drove this economy into a ditch will drive it off a cliff. That is irresponsible and unacceptable. Congress should pass the $2 trillion increase in the debt limit right now and with no preconditions.

You don't have to take my word for it or even Treasury Secretary Geithner's warning that that default by the U.S. "would have a catastrophic economic impact that would be felt by every American." Back in January, Speaker Boehner himself explained, and I quote:

"That would be a financial disaster, not only for our country but for the worldwide economy. Remember, the American people on Election Day said, 'we want to cut spending and we want to create jobs.' And you can't create jobs if you default on the federal debt."

Economists, business leaders, think tanks and international financial bodies are in agreement regarding the dire consequences which would ensue. Mark Zandi, an economic adviser in 2008 to John McCain warned this week that failure to raise the debt ceiling by August 2nd would mean "I think we go into recession and my forecast would be blown out of the water." Bruce Josten of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce agreed that failure to pass legislation authorizing an increase in borrowing by Aug. 4 "would create uncertainty and fear, and threaten the credit rating of the United States." This week, 235 economists - including six Nobel Prize winners - signed an open letter to Congressional leaders urging them to raise the ceiling, and to do so "without attaching drastic and potentially dangerous reductions in federal spending." And the Standard & Poor's rating agency joined Moody's in warning that "the United States would immediately have its top-notch credit rating slashed to 'selective default' if it misses a debt payment on August 4."

Again, you don't have to take my word for it. Instead, listen to President Ronald Reagan from 1983:

This country now possesses the strongest credit in the world. The full consequences of a default -- or even the serious prospect of default -- by the United States are impossible and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and on the value of the dollar in exchange markets. The Nation can ill afford to allow such a result. The risks, the costs, the disruptions, and the incalculable damage lead me to but one conclusion: the Senate must pass this legislation before the Congress adjourns.

Ronald Reagan knew what he was talking about. After all, the national debt of the United States tripled during his tenure in the White House. And it would have been even worse had Reagan not raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office. As Alan Simpson, the co-chairman of my Commission on Fiscal Responsibility put it, "Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration -- I was here."

Now, some, like Speaker Boehner, have said that the early August deadline to increase the debt ceiling is "artificial." There are Republican members of both houses and GOP presidential candidates who have accused Treasury Secretary Geithner and this administration of "doomsday predictions that could only materialize at his own hand," of "scare tactics", and of "outright blatant lies." To those who claim that the debt limit need not be lifted and that the U.S simply "prioritize" interest payments on the debt, Secretary Geithner has been clear that "such uncertainty could cause the markets to doubt the full faith and credit of the United States." And the Republican opposition, or at least most of them, knows this to be true. To pretend otherwise, as Senator Jon Kyl is fond of saying, is "not intended to be a factual statement."

That is as unforgiveable as it is cynical.

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George W. Bush was the first modern president to cut taxes during wartime. Now, the unpaid $2 trillion bill for the wars he fought - and chose to fight - is long overdue. While President Obama and the Republican leadership in Congress jockey to position their budget cutting plans, it's time for both parties - and all Americans - to pay the price we claim liberty demands. Here, then, is the Bipartisan War Tax Act of 2013.

2013, that is, because now isn't the time to raise income and other taxes. (Nor, for that matter, to reign in critical infrastructure spending and needed relief for the states.) While clearly gaining steam, the recovery from the Bush recession is still in its early stages. And, lamentably, President Obama and Congress just weeks ago inked a compromise two-year extension to the Bush tax cuts which will add another $800 billion in red ink to the U.S. national debt, much of it in new windfalls for the wealthiest Americans needing them least.

While there are countless scenarios for a war tax designed to pay off the costs of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, here are some suggested guidelines Bipartisan War Tax Act of 2013:

• Everyone pays. From the moment President Bush told us to go shopping and to "get down to Disney World" in the wake of the September 11 attacks, Americans haven't been asked to fight, pay for or otherwise sacrifice to defeat Al Qaeda. As FDR put it two days after Pearl Harbor, "We are now in this war. We are all in it-all the way. Every single man, woman, and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history." That must as true of our wars (and deficits) now as it was then.

• The rich pay more. This proud American tradition was met by the well-to-do of the Greatest Generation, who paid a top income tax rate of 94%. (Those stratospheric rates stayed in place until 1963, and remained as high as 77% throughout the sixties.)

• The war taxes are temporary. Just as the Bush tax cuts theoretically were supposed to sunset after a decade, so it should be for the War Tax Act. (Future deficit hawks can argue about their extension.)

• They must raise at least $3 trillion over ten years.

That price tag needs some elaboration. In September 2010, the Congressional Research Service put the total cost of the wars at $1.12 trillion, including $751 billion for Iraq and $336 billion for Afghanistan. For the 2012 fiscal year which begins on October 1, President Obama will ask for $117 billion more. (That war-fighting funding is over and above Secretary Gates' $553 billion Pentagon budget request for next year.) But in addition to the roughly $1.5 trillion tally for both conflicts through the theoretical 2014 American draw down date in Afghanistan, the U.S. faces staggering bills for veterans' health care and disability benefits. Last May, an analysis by the Center for American Progress estimated the total projected total cost of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans' health care and disability could reach between $422 billion to $717 billion. Reconstruction aid and other development assistance represent tens of billions more, as does the additional interest on the national debt. And none of the above counts the expanded funding for the new Department of Homeland Security.

But that two-plus trillion dollar tab doesn't account for the expansion of the United States military since the start of the "global war on terror." While ThinkProgress explained that the Pentagon's FY 2012 ask is "the largest request ever since World War II," McClatchy explained:

Such a boost would mark the 14th year in a row that Pentagon spending has increased, despite the waning U.S. presence in Iraq. In dollars, Pentagon spending has more than doubled in 10 years. Even adjusted for inflation, the Defense Department budget has risen 65% in the past decade.

Even with the proposed $78 billion in cuts and troop reductions advocated by Gates and Obama over the next five years, "the bottom-line figure would still go up during that time, with projected spending totaling $643 billion in 2015 and $735 billion in 2020."

Even with the reduction in staffing forecast for 2015, the Army and Marine Corps would be larger than they were when the Iraq and Afghanistan wars began.

Despite the grumbling of some Tea Party members, Congressional Republicans have made clear they want no cuts to defense as part of their $100 billion reduction in discretionary spending.

Which raises the question: why would perpetually tax-cutting Republicans agree to tax increases to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Because the Republicans believe the global terrorism poses as an existential threat to the United States. And we know this, because they repeatedly told us so.

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This weekend, Republicans marked the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan with speeches celebrating his small government philosophy, anti-tax fervor and hard-line foreign policy. But if Reagan was a GOP candidate today, he would doubtless fall victim to violations of his own 11th Commandment, "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican." Because despite all of the right-wing hagiography, Ronald Reagan ballooned the national debt, repeatedly raised taxes, signed abortion rights legislation and negotiated with terrorists in Iran. For those and so many other perceived offenses, the GOP rank and file - and especially its purity-demanding Tea Partiers - would today brand a reanimated Ronald Reagan a Republican in Name Only.

Meet RINO Reagan:

1. Reagan tripled the national debt
2. Reagan raised taxes 11 times
3. Reagan expanded the size of government
4. Reagan supported the "socialist" Earned Income Tax Credit
5. Reagan negotiated with terrorists in Tehran
6. Reagan sought to eliminate nuclear weapons
7. Reagan gave amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants
8. Reagan approved protectionist trade barriers
9. Reagan signed abortion rights law in California
10. Reagan eventually debunked AIDS myths Republicans continued to perpetuate

1. Reagan Tripled the National Debt. As most analysts predicted, Reagan's massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not the balanced budgets he promised, but record-settings deficits. Even his OMB alchemist David Stockman could not obscure the disaster with his famous "rosy scenarios."

Forced to raise taxes twice to avert financial catastrophe, the Gipper nonetheless presided over a tripling of the American national debt to nearly $3 trillion. By the time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history. It's no wonder Stockman lamented last year:

"[The] debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."

Sarah Palin's revisionist history Friday notwithstanding, it was Reagan who put the United States on "the road to ruin."

2. Reagan Raised Taxes 11 Times
As ThinkProgress noted, the inedible image of Ronald Reagan the tax cutter is "false mythology." (It is also worth noting that it was President Obama and not Reagan who delivered the largest two year tax cut in American history.) While Governor Reagan doubled California's state spending and signed the biggest tax hike up to that point, as President he raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan "a dear friend," told NPR, "Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration -- I was there."

3. Reagan Expanded the Size of Government
On Friday, Sarah Palin told the Reaganauts assembled by the Young Americans for Freedom, "We need to stop spending and cut government back down to size." If that's the case, her role model should be Democrat Bill Clinton and not Republican Ronald Reagan.

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Credit: Perrspectives

For years, Republicans have deployed the word "uncertainty" to stymie any public policy with which they disagreed. A decade after President Bush declared "scientific uncertainties remain" about global warming, virtually the entire Congressional Republican caucus has proudly joined the deniers' camp. Last month, GOP leaders revved up the uncertainty myth over taxes, falsely claiming that another tax cut windfall for the wealth was needed to "reduce the uncertainty that's affecting employers all across our country." Of course, on two of the most heated issues of the day - raising the U.S. debt ceiling and repealing the 2010 health care reform law - it is the GOP which is wholly responsible for creating real uncertainty for businesses, investors and all Americans.

Next week, House Republicans will bring their quixotic effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act to the floor. (The vote originally scheduled for this Wednesday was delayed. That was altogether fitting, as Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords received death threats and saw her office vandalized after her March 2010 vote for health care reform.) But whether they target the entire ACA or just individual provisions, Republicans are bringing only uncertainty - and not health care - to the American people.

As Politico detailed yesterday ("Investors See Health Law's Potential"), insurers themselves are agreed on that point:

As Republicans push forward on repealing health reform, planning the law's demise, a different conversation is happening among thousands of health care investors gathered in San Francisco for this week's J.P Morgan Health Care Conference: how to capitalize on health reform's new business opportunities.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates 32 million Americans will gain health insurance by 2019 if the law stands. For health insurers, that represents a potential boon for both their individual market business as well as in the Medicaid market, where states regularly contract with private insurers to manage care.

"The worst is behind them," says Ipsita Smolinski, president of Capitol Street and senior advisor to McKenna Long & Aldridge, of the outlook for health insurers. "There was so much uncertainty last year. But with the MLR and rate review regulations out, investors know they have a pretty viable future.

And it is the GOP's threatened repeal effort, and not an influx of 32 million new subscribers, which is creating uncertainty among insurers:

Health insurers spent barely anytime discussing Republicans' repeal efforts. Aetna's Zubretsky touched on the subject briefly only to say that Republicans understand that a rifle shot approach to tearing out specific health reform provisions, particularly the individual mandate, would not bode well for their business.

"The unintended consequence of repealing and replacing part of the legislation is the biggest risk here," he said.

Of course, the risks for the American people are much greater still.

Last week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that the GOP's H.R. 2, the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act, would not only lead to higher out of pocket costs, reduced benefits and saddle employers with higher premiums, but over the next 10 years would add $230 billion to the deficit. On Friday, Harvard economist David Cutler released a paper estimating that that repealing the health law could destroy 250,000 to 400,000 jobs annually over the next decade. And, as the Los Angeles Times reported, major insurers are reporting that thanks to the incentives in the Affordable Care Act, "a growing number of small businesses are signing up to give their workers health benefits."

But Republican bluster over health care pales in comparison to the potentially fatal effects of their refusal to increase the United States debt ceiling.

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Credit: New York Times

In their scorched-earth effort to deliver another $700 billion tax cut windfall for the wealthy, Republicans have fittingly appropriated their favorite global warming talking point: "uncertainty." Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and John Boehner are just of the GOP leaders claiming "Congress ought to act today to stop all the tax hikes" because "it would reduce the uncertainty that's affecting employers all across our country." Of course, they are predictably silent about the 1980's, when Ronald Reagan upended the tax code four times in five years, including "the biggest tax increase ever enacted during peacetime." And despite conservative warnings then as now about "job-killing tax hikes," American businesses responded by adding 23 million jobs after President Clinton raised upper-income tax rates in 1993.

Since the age of Reagan, the Republican electoral strategy has been "you can fool some of the people some of the time and that's our target market. At least, that is, when it comes to taxes. Because while the Gipper did deliver steep tax cuts in 1981 (slashing the top rate from 70% to 28%), what Reagan giveth he also taketh away. As Paul Krugman noted, in the face of the staggering deficits Reagan's supply-side tax cuts produced, "no peacetime president has raised taxes so much on so many people":

The first Reagan tax increase came in 1982. By then it was clear that the budget projections used to justify the 1981 tax cut were wildly optimistic. In response, Mr. Reagan agreed to a sharp rollback of corporate tax cuts, and a smaller rollback of individual income tax cuts. Over all, the 1982 tax increase undid about a third of the 1981 cut; as a share of G.D.P., the increase was substantially larger than Mr. Clinton's 1993 tax increase.

Tax historian Joseph Thorndike concurred, noting that the two bills passed in 1982 and 1984 together "constituted the biggest tax increase ever enacted during peacetime."

But the Reagan tax hikes hardly ended there.

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Credit: New York Times

In a rare moment of candor last week, the third-ranking Republican in the House admitted the failure of the Bush tax cuts. "You know, I think it's fair to say, if the current tax rates were enough to create jobs and generate economic growth we'd have a growing economy," Mike Pence acknowledged, adding, "It's not working now." Given that the Bush years produced the worst economic growth in the past 50 years, Pence is sadly correct. But sadder still is the dismal performance of the Bush economy across almost every indicator that counts. From moribund job creation and sinking household incomes to skyrocketing deficits and record income inequality, Republican economic stewardship over the past decade has been a disaster.

Here, then, are the 10 Epic Failures of the Bush Tax Cuts:

1. Dismal Economic Growth
2. A Decade of Budget Deficits
3. Red Ink as Far as the Eye Can See
4. Disastrous Job Creation
5. Declining Incomes
6. Increasing Poverty
7. A Massive Windfall for the Wealthy
8. Record Income Inequality
9. A Sagging Stock Market
10. Jeopardizing Future Economic Growth

(Details and charts for each follow below the fold.)

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As Ronald Reagan's budget chief almost thirty years ago, a frustrated David Stockman famously lamented that when it comes to spending discipline, "there are no real conservatives in Congress." Now, three decades after he concluded "the supply-siders have gone too far," Stockman called the Republican demand for another $700 billion tax cut windfall for the wealthy, "unconscionable." As well he should. With the new GOP majority's financial toxic brew of gargantuan tax giveaways and still unnamed spending cuts, the Free Lunch Party has returned.

In truth, it never really left. As Stockman experienced first-hand, the national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan. The Gipper's M.C. Escher-like pledge to slash taxes, raise defense spending and balance the budget produced a torrent of red in that exceeded that of the previous 200 plus years of American history combined.

But conservative propagandists soon forgot Stockman's "magic asterisk" and Reagan's subsequent tax increases, neither of which could stop the record budget deficits he produced. After the Clinton balanced budget hiatus in the 1990's, George W. Bush doubled the national debt yet again. As explained in "The Bush Tax Cuts in Pictures," President Bush's Free Lunch dream predictably turned into a budgetary nightmare:

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities demolished the mythology promoted by President Bush ("You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase") and the usual suspects on the right. CBPP found that Bush tax cuts accounted for almost half of the mushrooming deficits during his tenure.

And as another recent CBPP analysis revealed, over the next 10 years, the Bush tax cuts if made permanent will contribute more to the U.S. budget deficit than the Obama stimulus, the TARP program, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and revenue lost to the recession put together.

(Worse still, the Bush tax cuts also coincided with an increase in poverty and a decline in Americans' average household income.)

And now, at a time of record budget deficits and record income inequality, Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell want to make the expiring Bush tax cuts permanent. The leading lights of the GOP still insist that draining $4 trillion from the U.S. Treasury over the next 10 years (including that $700 billion payday for the richest 2%) doesn't cost a cent.

For his part, this summer John Boehner wrongly claimed, "It's not the marginal tax rates ... that's not what led to the budget deficit." In July, Jon Kyl (R-AZ) the second ranking Senate Republican made the same point another way, telling Chris Wallace of Fox News, "You should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans." Aborted Obama Commerce nominee Judd Gregg (R-NH) soon chimed in, declaring "I tend to think that tax cuts should not have to be offset." For his part, Oklahoma's Tom Coburn argued his math will work in the future if you ignore the past, "Continuing the [Bush] tax cuts isn't a cost, if you added new taxes, new tax cuts, I would agree that's a cost." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explained how tax cuts magically turn red ink black:

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Credit: OpenCongress

"Reagan proved," Vice President Dick Cheney famously said in 2002, "deficits don't matter." Not, that is, when a Republican is sitting in the White House. After all, Republicans were silent as the national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan and doubled again under George W. Bush. As it turns out, the same hypocrisy of the GOP's born-again deficit hawks extends to the U.S. debt ceiling as well. After voting seven times to raise the debt ceiling under Bush, Republicans are now promising to just say no to Democrat Barack Obama. And for their political posturing, they risk not only a shutdown of the federal government, but a global economic crisis as well.

In early 2011, the U.S. debt ceiling will have to be bumped up from it current $14.3 trillion level. But for the first time in the nation's history, the emboldened GOP leadership is threatening to block the needed increase and so trigger a default by the government of the United States.

That was the word from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Within hours of Tuesday's midterm voting, McConnell signaled the GOP would oppose boosting the debt ceiling needed to avoid a global economic panic unless there were "strings attached." Appearing on Meet the Press Sunday, South Carolina Senator Jim Demint made clear what strings he had in mind. Asked if he'll support raising the debt ceiling, Demint responded:

"No, I won't. Not unless this debt ceiling is combined with some path to balancing our budget, returning to 2008 spending levels, repealing Obamacare. We have got to demonstrate that we have the resolve to cut spending ... we cannot allow that to go through the Congress without showing the American people that we are going to balance the budget, and we're not going to continue to raise the debt in America."

Meanwhile in the House, Eric Cantor (R-VA), who joined the ranks of Republican spending cut cowards refusing to say how they'd slash the budget, insisted the looming government shutdown and worldwide economic calamity would be all President Obama's fault:

"The chief executive, the president, is as responsible as any in terms of running this government. The president has a responsibility, as much or more so than Congress, to make sure that we are continuing to function in a way that the people want."

Of course, it wasn't always this way with Congressional Republicans. Not when they were taking orders from George W. Bush.

As OpenCongress detailed after January's party-line vote to add $1.9 trillion to the debt ceiling, Republican intransigence began in earnest when Bush left the White House for good. As Donny Shaw documented:

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