112 - Paid to not work

It's been just over a week since that fateful day in Tuscon. President Obama delivered an inspiring speech at the Tuscon memorial service and that same day, Sarah Palin sunk her entire political career by proving that she just doesn't have a clue what it means to be presidential. We were slapped with the utter irony of Glenn Becks website post calling for non violence with a picture of Beck himself wielding a handgun to the immediate left of the post. We have found that Jared Lee Loughner was in fact a disciple of the far right wing sovereign citizen movement and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is making a miracle recovery. And we learned today that Peace Corp director Sargent Shriver passed away.

So, with this insane backdrop, the House of Representatives is back in action with the Tan Man at the helm. And, of course, we are subjected to the political theater of the job-killing health care bill repeal. Wait, no it's job-destroying. Umm wait job-crushing. Republicans are backing away from their title but not the bill itself. The bill itself must be debated, voted on, passed on to the Senate, who will vote it down. And even if they somehow through some miracle of the Republican God pass the repeal, President Obama would never sign it and the votes are not there to override his veto.

So, it's dead. It hasn't even been debated yet on the floor of the house and it's dead. It was dead when it was submitted. It was dead when it was written. It was dead when it was conceived. And yet, here we are discussing it like it actually is a valid piece of legislation.

Why?

Some would claim that this entire production allows the Republicans to come back in a year and a half and say," hey, we tried to repeal it. we are on your side, Tea Party. Vote for us and vote out those socialist Democrats who are tearing our country down." And make no mistake, that will be one of the many of the Republican lies spread throughout the country come the next election cycle.

Today is a good day to do nothing.



There is a more important reason to stage this three act play in the House, the Republicans have once again stalled any forward movement. Once again, the party of no has taken our future hostage while they perform their melodrama out for all to see. Once again, they have found a way to take the national discussion and move it to the title of the bill instead of the contents of the bill itself. They began with repeal and replace and now have it down to simply repeal. They have not mentioned a single word about what they plan to replace the Health care reform bill with. Not one thing. Instead, they have moved off that message and are now calling the reform soemthing it is not, never will be and never was. Job-killing.

The so called fiscally responsible right ignore the numbers coming out of the Congressional Budget Office that said repealing health care would increase the deficit by $230 billion dollars. Additionally, repealing the health care reform bill would repeal the tax breaks passed in the bill for small businesses. That means, the party that fought tooth and nail to keep the Bush era tax breaks for the rich, now wants to raise taxes on small business owners. Why is this not being screamed from microphone by Democrats. Why are they instead fighting over the phrase job-killing, instead of screaming about the actual job-killing this repeal would mean?

The fiscally irresponsible Republicans have stated in no uncertain terms, their only real goal is to see that President Obama is a one term president. The best way they can hope to achieve this is by keeping the government tied up in knots unable to move forward, unable to pass anything that would actually help the people, unable to focus on any real issue at all. This has been their modus operandi since the days of the Ken Starr witch hunt. So, here we are at the beginning of the 112th congress and they're at it again.

In the end, the reason we should be most outraged is, if you voted for the winner or not, we sent them to Washington to do a job. We are paying them to do that job and instead of doing that job, they engage in a trivial partisan propaganda play. Every minute spent on the fake repeal is a minute they aren't doing their job. Every minute they debate the name of this pretend proposal, this bogus bill, is time spent away from actually getting to the true business of the government, which is governing.

How many hours did you have to spend at work to pay these people to pretend to work?