"The chief consequence of the conservatives' unrelenting faith in the badness of government," Thomas Franks wrote three years ago in The Wrecking Crew, "is bad government." But would happen if virtually every article of that faith were wrong or, much worse, a blatant lie? Then you'd have something that looks very much like the crisis over the soon-to-be breached U.S. debt ceiling. After all, despite the dire warnings of impending doom from economists, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street ratings agencies, GOP-friendly business groups and even some of their leaders, many Republicans would sooner see the United States default and its recovery destroyed than follow the dictates of either national interest or reason. And it's all because the Republican prime directive - political power at any cost - trumps the truth.

Arizona's Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Senate Republican, gave the game away in April when his office declared his slander of Planned Parenthood was "not intended to be a factual statement." So it is for just about every GOP talking point. Tax cuts don't "pay for themselves." The GOP job creators didn't create jobs after the Bush tax cuts, though they did when their taxes were higher. There are neither "death panels" nor a "government takeover of health care" in the Affordable Care Act which, despite Republican myth-making, actually reduces the national debt over the next decade. Barack Obama isn't a Muslim, but he was born in the United States. Public employees are not overpaid and vote fraud does not threaten American democracy. Global warming isn't "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." And we did not go to war in Iraq "because we were attacked."

Despicable and dangerous as these frauds are, they didn't threaten to destroy the American economy in a matter of days and with it, the global financial system.

It's not as if the Republican "default deniers" and "debt kamikazes" weren't warned.

On the same day last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Wall Street rating agencies joined the ever-louder chorus of voices warning Republicans that failure to raise the U.S. debt ceiling would result in "calamity." Those pleas followed a new analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center concluded that failure to boost the debt ceiling by the August drop-dead window would force the U.S. Treasury to immediately slash spending by 44%. As The Hill reported, "On an annualized basis, the cut in spending alone is a 10 percent cut in GDP, BPC scholar Jay Powell told reporters." The IMF similarly cautioned that "the debt ceiling should be raised as soon as possible to avoid damage to the economy and world financial markets." 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." Failure to do so, they warned, "could push the United States back into recession." So it came as no surprise when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner declared on Thursday, "We're running out of time" to avoid what Ezra Klein deemed the "catastrophic calculations" of default.

But Republicans don't need to take Geithner's word for it. They can heed the words of their party bosses.

In their few moments of candor, GOP leaders expressed agreement with Tim Geithner's assessment that default by the U.S. "would have a catastrophic economic impact that would be felt by every American." The specter of a global financial cataclysm has been described as resulting in "severe harm" (McCain economic adviser Mark Zandi), "financial collapse and calamity throughout the world" (Senator Lindsey Graham) and "you can't not raise the debt ceiling" (House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan). In January, even Speaker John Boehner acknowledged as much:

"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."

Nevertheless, eight month after he warned his new GOP House majority that "we're going to have to deal with it as adults" and three months after he told a Tea Party gathering that "we're going to have to raise it again in the future," Speaker Boehner this week acknowledged that at least 60 GOP Congressmen "won't vote to raise the debt ceiling under any circumstances."

Boehner's head count doesn't begin to do justice to the Republican fiscal recklessness bordering on dementia.

For months, Republican presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty led the default denier chorus. While Mitt Romney joined Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul in supporting the "Cut, Cap and Balance" Pledge which demands a balanced budget amendment and draconian spending cuts as conditions of raising the debt ceiling. This week, the House and Senate will vote on their respective versions of the Cut, Cap and Balance Act, which among other things would require supermajorities to raise taxes or breach a federal spending cap targeted at 18% of U.S. gross domestic product.

As it turns out, outlays by the federal government haven't been as low as 18% of GDP since 1966. (That's why the Simpson-Bowles Commission created by President Obama and opposed by Senate Republicans set a 21% target.) As it turns out, the 98% of Republicans in Congress voted for Paul Ryan's budget plan would fail their own Cut, Cap and Balance test. As Ezra Klein explained in April:

House Republicans voted to make the Ryan budget law. But the Ryan budget includes $6 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years, which means that to become law, the Ryan budget would require a substantial increase in the debt ceiling. But before the Republicans agree to increase the debt ceiling so that the budget they passed can become law, Republicans are demanding the passage of either a balanced budget amendment that would make the Ryan budget unconstitutional or a spending cap that the Ryan budget would, in certain years (and if you're using more realistic numbers, in all years), exceed.

Nevertheless, House Republicans, pressured by Tea Party zealots, have been digging in their heels. This week, Congressmen Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Steve King (R-IA) joined Bachmann in calling the Obama administration's warnings about the August 2 deadline lies. (Not to be outdone, Sarah Palin, who previously blasted "Timothy Geithner's false statements to the American people," tweeted "Obama lies, economy dies.") Georgia Rep. Paul Broun called for the debt ceiling to be lowered to $13 trillion, would necessitate immediately cutting roughly three-fourths of all federal spending. And while Arkansas Rep. Eric "Rick" Crawford announced that a default "wouldn't work for just a few days, that would work for a few years," his freshman colleague Mo Brooks (R-AL) insisted no debt ceiling increase, no problem. As the Washington Post reported:

"There should be no default on August 2," Brooks said. "In fact, our credit rating should be improved by not raising the debt ceiling."

That stands in contrast to a warning from Moody's. The rating agency said Wednesday that it might downgrade the U.S. government's top-notch credit rating, "given the rising possibility that the statutory debt limit will not be raised on a timely basis, leading to a default."

It's now wonder conservative columnist David Brooks fretted that the GOP is no longer "a normal party." Or as former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill put it:

"The people who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling are our version of al Qaeda terrorists. Really. They're really putting our whole society at risk by threatening to round up 50 percent of the members of the Congress, who are loony, who would put our credit at risk."

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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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The national debt of the United States tripled under Ronald Reagan and doubled again under George W. Bush. Bush and the GOP Congress cut taxes during wartime, a first in modern American history. During his presidency, Republicans voted seven times to increase the debt ceiling. As Utah Senator Orrin Hatch in 2009 described Republican orthodoxy under Republican presidents, "It was standard practice not to pay for things."

But that was then and this is now. And now with a Democrat in the White House, Hatch and his Republican colleagues are demanding passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment as a condition of raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. Whether that blackmail is paid or not, either way the result would be a catastrophe for the United States.

The Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) gambit is just the latest chapter in the Republican saga of "America Held Hostage." Earlier this month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned that "not a single one of the 47 Republicans will vote to raise the debt ceiling unless it includes with it some credible effort to do something about our debt." McConnell then upped the ante:

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell warned on Friday that GOP senators will not vote to increase the government's borrowing limit unless President Barack Obama agrees to rein in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, laying down a high-stakes marker just weeks before the debt ceiling is reached.

Now, as Human Events and Politico reported Friday, America's Republican captors are threatening the shut down the government and undermine the full faith and credit of the United States if their demands for a "Starve the Beast" amendment are not met:

The Senate Republicans are preparing to tell President Obama that they want a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) to the Constitution passed in Congress in exchange for raising the statuary debt ceiling above $14.2 trillion.

"My hope is that we would force a vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment as a condition to voting on the debt ceiling," Sen. John Cornyn (R.-Tex.) told HUMAN EVENTS. "By next week, or shortly thereafter, we will have all 47 Republicans unified behind the effort, and then begin to reach out to our Democratic colleagues."

A BBA would force the federal government to balance the federal spending to incoming revenue each year and cap spending at 18% of the gross domestic product (GDP). For the current Fiscal Year (FY 2011), the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that government spending will be $1.4 trillion more than revenue and account for almost 25% of the GDP.

Of course, the GOP BBA is a recipe for disaster. If codified, Republican grandstanding on the budget would not only mean draconian cuts in government services. The fragile U.S. recovery would be stopped dead in its tracks.

As a matter of simple math, balancing President Obama's proposed FY 2012 budget would mean slashing $1.6 trillion from a $3.7 trillion spending request. That inevitably would devastate federal programs across the board. As this now-dated diagram of the 2011 budget below illustrates, you simply can't get there from here without raising taxes. Taking interest on the debt and defense spending off the table (as most Republicans insist) means cutting over half of everything else the federal government does. And that includes Social Security and Medicare.

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