Republicans made many promises to their Tea Party base, and as you would expect they have already started backtracking on most of them. One was that amendments would be allowed to be added to bills and Greta Van Susteren was none too happy with Rep. David Dreier last night about it, as she immediately bit down on his neck over the broken promise. She then beat him up over not proposing a bill to repeal health care reform
Greta: But you promised. This is what you promised so right out of the box you're not doing it. Why don't you do it?
---Frankly, I'm not impressed when you make a promise...
Greta kept at him for a while and then moved on, but did she and her Tea Party pals really believe all the promises that the GOP made during the run-up to the midterms? Howard Fineman has already reported that Republicans can't come close to cutting $100 billion out of the budget, as Boehner promised in his idiotic Pledge to America.
The GOP "budget cut" numbers are getting squishier by the minute. At least it seemed that way in the hallways of the Capitol on a ceremonial first day of swearing-ins, family photo ops and back-slapping goodwill. Republicans campaigned coast to coast on, among other things, a promise to cut $100 billion out of the federal budget.
But now they are talking about cuts as slim as $30 billion, blaming the change on the fine print that no one read -- or if they read, did not understand. It turns out the $100-billion figure meant $100 billion from a budget that President Barack Obama proposed, which was never passed. And now that the fiscal year is nearly half over, well, there's just no way ...
And then there's the very nutty Rep. Louis Gohmert from Texas, who stripped out transparency from the rules.
BUT – the health care repeal legislation, the first major bill that will move through Congress, will be a closed rule – meaning no one will be able to offer an amendment.
When asked about the this contradiction Tuesday night, Boehner said, "it's not like we haven't litigated this for years."
And, finally, the initial rules package that House Republicans will pass Wednesday had a provision to make committee attendance public. But the House GOP conference voted last night to strip that out (a move by Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas). The goal had been transparency – who is at these hearings? But making that public will no longer be a requirement.
The reason? Some GOP lawmakers say they were concerned about getting slammed for missing hearings when they may have extenuating circumstances, like a death in the family.
I do hope right-wing pundits continue to hold the GOP accountable for their promises. I imagine if they are too hard on them, though, then another Fox News memo will come down from Bill Sammon telling them to tone it down.
