After the Senate released the framework of an immigration bill on January 29th I wrote this: Immigration Reform: Not So Fast! I've been watching the extreme right infiltrate the GOP (with Republican operatives help) at an alarming rate since 2010 so it's not a stretch to believe House Republicans will screw it up, and guess what?

It's starting.

House Republicans insisted on Tuesday that Democrats are showing a lack of willingness to compromise on immigration reform by calling for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, arguing that they should be more open to legislation without it.

"Are there options that we should consider between the extremes of mass deportation and the pathway to citizenship for those not lawfully present in the United States?" Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, asked San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro (D) at a hearing on immigration reform, the first on the issue for the 113th Congress.

Another top Republican, immigration subcommittee chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), accused Democrats of refusing to come toward the center.
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But the progress made by those bipartisan groups on the issue masks the difficulty that remains. Gowdy indicated openness to the Senate plan when it was released last week, but Goodlatte told USA Today on Monday that is he not convinced by the Senate immigration plan because of supporters' insistence that there be a pathway to citizenship. He questioned whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is "serious about doing immigration reform."

Citizenship is at the heart of immigration reform and Republicans should be jumping at the chance of finally appearing to be a party that cares about people---immigrants too, but alas, they can't help themselves. They are even stating that Latinos really don't care if they are citizens as long as they are treated with respect.

Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), an immigration lawyer before coming to Congress, said he believed there could be a solution to the immigration issue without including a pathway to citizenship.

“What they want is to come out of the shadows, they want to be able to be legal, they want to be able to work, they want to be able to travel, they want to be able to feel like they are being treated with dignity,” Labrador said. “Not very many people told me: I want to be a citizen, I have to be a citizen in order to feel like a dignified person.”

Do Republicans really believe that after supporting Sensenbrenner's insane bill that basically turned illegals into felons that not supporting eventual full citizenship is going to appease the entire Latino population of America? This is going to make for some interesting television as this drags on. Karl Rove didn't mind helping the teabagger revolution until they started to go after moderate Republicans in safe districts.

But as I've said repeatedly, once the right wing let the nuts out of the box to help them form the Tea Party, it's almost impossible to put them back in.

Karl, your new money scam will not turn out well for your new investors while your old allies ramp up their hatred for you. He might be the only Republican shill who hopes the House R's screw up immigration reform so he can make more cash off these saps. Enjoy!

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Last Monday, something remarkable happened. PBS aired their newest Frontline segment on the first four years of Obama's presidency. In the opening segment, Frank Luntz crowed proudly about how the strategy session he organized and which took place four years ago today had proven to be a rousing success.

That strategy was, of course, the decision for Republicans to stand united against anything the President proposed. Anything, even if it was originally a Republican idea. In their mind, that was the only way they could recover from the devastating election results of 2008.

In some ways, this wasn't news. Robert Draper's book about the House of Representatives was the first "official report", but this is the very first time anyone who was actually in that meeting went on the record to talk crow about it.

With that in mind, I am struggling to understand the Villager whine and groan over how, in his second term, President Obama must "bring Republicans to the table."

Politifact, in all of its wisdom, has pronounced that "Obama failed to keep 119 or nearly one-fourth of his promises, including many high-profile ones such as his pledges to close the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to create a cap-and-trade system to combat global warming and his vow to 'bring Democrats and Republicans together to pass an agenda.'"

Politifact's editors know about what I call "The Covenant." Yet they framed a report which actually said that the president kept 73 percent of his campaign promises in terms of a failure to foster bipartisanship.

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I'm getting a little tired of the Todd Akin auto-da-fe. It's annoying to hear "reasonable" Republicans like Joe Scarborough and Mark McKinnon fret that a Republican candidate for US Senate would blurt out such offensive craziness.

Where have these guys been for the past 20 years?

Akin isn't the problem at all -- it's the entire party.

Take a look around key committees of the House and you’ll find a governing body stocked with crackpots whose views on major issues are as removed from reality as Missouri’s Representative Todd Akin’s take on the sperm-killing powers of a woman who’s been raped.

[...]

We’re currently experiencing the worst drought in 60 years, a siege of wildfires, and the hottest temperatures since records were kept. But to Republicans in Congress, it’s all a big hoax. The chairman of a subcommittee that oversees issues related to climate change, Representative John Shimkus of Illinois is — you guessed it — a climate-change denier.

At a 2009 hearing, Shimkus said not to worry about a fatally dyspeptic planet: the biblical signs have yet to properly align. “The earth will end only when God declares it to be over,” he said, and then he went on to quote Genesis at some length. It’s worth repeating: This guy is the chairman.

And,

On the same committee is an oil-company tool and 27-year veteran of Congress, Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas. [...] Barton cited the Almighty in questioning energy from wind turbines. Careful, he warned, “wind is God’s way of balancing heat.” Clean energy, he said, “would slow the winds down” and thus could make it hotter. You never know.

“You can’t regulate God!” Barton barked at the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in the midst of discussion on measures to curb global warming.

And,

Jack Kingston of Georgia, a 20-year veteran of the House, is an evolution denier, apparently because he can’t see the indent where his ancestors’ monkey tail used to be. “Where’s the missing link?” he said in 2011. “I just want to know what it is.” He serves on a committee that oversees education.

And,

Another Georgia congressman, Paul Broun, introduced the so-called personhood legislation in the House — backed by Akin and Representative Paul Ryan — that would have given a fertilized egg the same constitutional protections as a fully developed human being.

Broun is on the same science, space and technology committee that Akin is. Yes, science is part of their purview.

Paul Broun is the raving loon who, shortly after Barack Obama won a higher percentage of the popular vote than Ronald Reagan in 1980, warned of the looming fascist dictatorship and compared him to Hitler (audio above).

And did these congressmen face any consequences for their inflammatory rhetoric? Not at all, they're all members -- and leaders -- in good standing.

So when Republicans start kicking out members like Broun, Kingston, Bachmann, Shimkus, Barton, Gohmert and Allen West -- just to name a few -- I'll know they're serious about cleaning up their party.

Until then, they should stop picking on Todd Akin. He's just playing by their rules. And they're only making noise about it because he may cost them the Senate.

Up till now, I just figured John Boehner was incompetent as GOP Speaker of the House, and he may still be. But Rachel Maddow makes a compelling argument here; namely, that Boehner was set up to fail on purpose by his own caucus. Watch the whole video for her argument.

In thinking about it, that would answer a lot of questions for me about why it was Tea Party freshmen who defected first after firmly declaring they would not, could not possibly vote for a 2-month payroll tax cut. If Cantor saw this battle as one he could set Boehner up to lose, he must really have designs on that Speaker seat before he loses in 2012.

I think there will be more to this story in the months to come.

Tina Dupuy has an excellent piece in The Atlantic examining how this Republican Congress is on pace to set a modern record for non-accomplishment -- while expending endless energy passing bills that have no chance of passing the Senate:

One quarter into the 112th Congress's two-year term, only 14 pieces of legislation originating in the House have become laws (12 bills and two house joint resolutions). Fourteen. Compare that with the House in the 111th, which claimed 254 laws (plus 11 house joint resolutions) over two years. The 110th had 308 (plus 10 house joint resolutions). Even the often-derided do-nothing 109th Congress's House controlled by the GOP passed 316 (with 16 house joint resolutions).

If the current House continues with this trend it will have produced a mere 48 laws by the end of the chamber's full term.

Quick math: The last three Houses have by this time in their tenure produced an average of 76 laws each.

But when House Republicans are actually in session, it's not exactly like they're doing nothing. They've made a point of passing bills that "send a message." Over and over, they've brought legislation to the floor that was doomed to die in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Why? To put taxpayer money where Republican congresspersons' mouths (and votes) are. Yes, the House Republicans of 112th Congress are having a love affair with the symbolic vote.

Dupuy compiled a list of the many bills that have passed the House with no chance of passage in the Senate, including the health-care repealers, defunding Planned Parenthood and NPR, ending the oil-drilling moratorium in the Gulf, and gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Of course, these are the same people demanding that President Obama devise a debt-ceiling plan ... even though that's a responsibility clearly in Congress' hands.

By the way, look for more of Dupuy's work here at Crooks and Liars. She's joining the C&L team beginning Monday. (You can also check out her work at her own site.) Welcome Tina!

Ezra on the “cut, cap and balance” nonsense from the House Republicans:

Perhaps CC&B would be an understandable policy fantasy in normal times. But three years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression? We've been violently reminded that there are times when economies contract, and contract fast. Individuals and businesses stop spending, and states and cities have to cut back sharply. The only way to prevent massive layoffs, the only way to give the unemployed some help and the underpaid some relief, is for the federal government to spend. And yet we want to write into the Constitution a requirement that spending remain at 18 percent of the previous year's GDP? That is to say, a requirement that the federal government needs to make recessions worse rather than drawing on its unique capacity to make them better? Are we mad?

And Republicans, frankly, know much of this. Ronald Reagan's entire presidency would've been unconstitutional under CC&B. Same for George W. Bush's. Paul Ryan's budget wouldn't pass muster. The only budget that might work for this policy -- if you could implement it -- would be the proposal produced by the ultra-conservative Republican Study Committee. But that proposal was so extreme and unworkable that a majority of Republicans voted it down. The only reason CC&B is faring any better is that it doesn't get specific about what it would require. But properly understood, that makes it much worse policy -- and that's before you realize we're talking about a constitutional amendment, not a simple budget.

Ultimately, though, the real sin here isn't that bad policy will pass. It's that we're wasting precious time on bad policy that won't. Everyone involved knows this will never pass the Senate or the White House. Perhaps that would be okay if we didn't have anything better to do. But we have two weeks before we crash the economy into the rocks of the debt ceiling. It's not a good sign that instead of moving towards compromises and tough choices, the House GOP is daydreaming and sloganeering.

Oh, it’s not just us – progressives – beating up on the crazy House Republicans. Even conservatives are piling on the mockery. From Bruce Bartlett, former economic advisor to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush:

“This is quite possibly the stupidest constitutional amendment I think I have ever seen. It looks like it was drafted by a couple of interns on the back of a napkin … [It was] designed solely for the purpose of appealing to ignorant Tea Party types.”

And from Daniel Foster, News Editor of National Review:

“Memo to House GOP: passing a plan that will never become law is *almost* as irresponsible as passing no plan at all.”

Ouch! And to rub salt on the wound, David Rogers from the POLITICO speculated that "even Ronald Reagan might have opposed" this stunt. Yet, here they are … moving forward with their crazy stunt with "no backup plan after vote."

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To no one’s surprise, the overwhelming majority of people in this country do not like the crazy, extremist House GOP’s reckless handling of the ongoing default crisis. A CBS News poll came out today showing that only 21 percent of this nation backs the Republicans’ “handling” of default crisis-related negotiations.

If the House GOP were led by rational actors who actually cared about the best interest of this country and operated on good faith, they would at this point drop their crazy posturing and get serious about accepting a deal that has already been tilted towards the right. But there is no chance. In fact, the House GOP is doubling down and ratcheting up the crazy. Last week they first trotted out a "balanced budget amendment", which was basically a “Trojan horse to end Medicare” and other entitlement. Jon aptly described it as "U.S. fiscal suicide" back in March. They were making a lot of noise, hoping to bring that reckless piece of legislation to the floor this week.

Well, they pulled the BBA off the docket late last week and instead are now planning to bring another dogmatic piece of wingnut legislation with the turd-polishing title of "cut, cap and balance", which is described charitably by the Republico Politico as “a popular conservative plan to cut spending, balance the budget and put a cap on overall federal spending, the latest Republican attempt to lay down their marker in the debt ceiling debate.” The proposal currently has “little chance” of passing. This is nothing short of a cynical stunt to inject yet more Grover Norquist-blessed “ideologically extreme” policy points into the insane default crisis-related discussions. Let's get into the craziness after the jump.

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I read Jake Tapper's article on the meeting between the President and the House Republicans with bated breath. Republicans described the meeting as being "frosty, good group therapy, nice conversation, frank and productive and even non-confrontational." Wow, who could have guessed that?

This is my favorite part, and it features Eric "The Tornado" Cantor:

Cantor also criticized Democrats’ “Medi-scare” attacks, saying that the charges that the GOP is taking medicine from grandma to pad the pockets of the rich isn’t helpful.

Oh, but they are doing exactly that, but that's beside the point. The President replied:

The president added that he is all for a reduction of demagoguery, an issue he understands since he is the ‘job killing, death panel, probably-wasn't-born-here president.’

Eric Cantor, who heartlessly has been refusing to help the tornado victims in Joplin, MO, unless they are first paid for with politically-motivated spending cuts, is openly complaining to the president about how mean they've been treated.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Monday that if Congress passes an emergency spending bill to help Missouri’s tornado victims, the extra money will have to be cut from somewhere else. “If there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental,” Mr. Cantor, Virginia Republican, told reporters at the Capitol. The term “pay-fors” is used by lawmakers to signal cuts or tax increases used to pay for new spending

He doubled down on those comments about tornado victims on Face The Nation and he's crying to the Commander in Chief. You can't make this up.
Republicans get elected by fearmongering anything and everything -- from "death panels" to incipient Marxism -- so it just makes me smile when I see a wimpy Eric Cantor openly complain to the president about how mean they've been treated while residents of Joplin and other regions hit by these marauding tornadoes are the ones who are really suffering.

In recent days we have talked a lot about Rep. Paul Ryan and his band of House Republicans championing a draconian and disastrous budget plan that will end Medicare as we know it. It is not very difficult to discern how cruel this plan is. Ryan’s plan will force seniors to pay more than twice as much out-of-pocket, and slash half a trillion in benefits and services through Medicaid, putting insurance companies back in charge of health care and nursing home benefits for tens millions of seniors and families.

The word that comes into mind when you read about this plan is an old-fashioned one: HEARTLESS.

It's the word that comes to mind when you hear the latest from Republican Leader Eric Cantor, who is out there saying Congress will not pay for the heart-breaking and unprecedented tornado disaster relief in Missouri unless spending is “cut from somewhere else”:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Monday that if Congress passes an emergency spending bill to help Missouri’s tornado victims, the extra money will have to be cut from somewhere else.

“If there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental,” Mr. Cantor, Virginia Republican, told reporters at the Capitol. The term “pay-fors” is used by lawmakers to signal cuts or tax increases used to pay for new spending.

This kind of heartlessness axes initiatives that strengthen the middle-class and protect senior citizens, students and the poor. And now they are publicly flaunting their collective state of minds -- even when it comes to areas where Americans have always come together to do the right thing and help one another, like natural disasters, or catastrophic health events.

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We have been wondering all week whether Speaker John Boehner and the Senate Republican leadership will actively lobby and whip the Republican Senate conference to support Representative Paul Ryan’s disastrous and cruel budget plan that would gut Medicare. We now have an answer to this question. The Hill is reporting today that Senate Republican leaders do not have the testicular fortitude to whip Paul Ryan’s plan to gut Medicare:

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) is leaving Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget plan to its own fate in the Senate by not whipping his GOP colleagues on the vote.

Republican senators say McConnell has made it clear he will vote for the House Budget Committee chairman’s plan, but has said rank-and-file members should vote as they want on the 2012 budget proposal.

Okay then. McConnell is not up for re-election until 2014. According to the article Sens. Jon Kyl (Ariz.) and Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), two key members of the Republican Leadership will vote for Ryan's proposal but that does not mean anything. Kyle is retiring and Alexander is not up for re-election until 2014 either. If these guys were really excited and supportive of Ryan's extreme budget plan, they would have actively whipped it. That is not happening as they are playing hot potatoes with it. Boy, when these Republicans need to impose party discipline they are ruthless about it yet we are seeing none of that here because they just do not have the courage to vigorously lobby their colleagues to support it.

So how do their counterparts in the House Republican Leadership feel about this? Eric Cantor and the entire right wing movement spent the whole week beating up on Newt Blingrich for daring to speak up against Ryan’s “right wing social engineering” project. What are they going to do now that even the Senate Republican leadership is too cowardly to embrace this crazy plan?

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