How the Republicans Screwed the Pooch**

By Paul Begala Jul 30, 2011  Daily Beast edited and re-posted by me and jilli.

When President Clinton left office he left a gift to the folks on his team – the first balanced budget in decades.  It wasn’t supposed to be the last, either.  “Experts” predicted surpluses ‘as far as the eye could see’ - $5.7 TRILLION in surpluses, to be exact – and so strong that deep into the future [in 2009] the ENTIRE NATIONAL DEBT WAS GOING TO BE ZERO.

But it didn't quite work out that way, did it? 

As Washington seems paralyzed, as our economy stagnates, and as America's full faith and credit is on the brink [note, this was written before the US was downgraded from AAA], it is useful to recall how we got here. This was not an Act of Nature. There was no Unforeseen Earthquake, no Tsunami, no Hurricane that wiped out our surplus. It was a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a Republican president who squandered the surplus. In full possession of the federal government for the first time since Eisenhower, the GOP - with, to be fair, some help from some very foolish DINOs - systematically dismantled the economic and fiscal policies that produced the strongest economy and largest budget surplus in our history.

Specifically, the repiglickins did four things: 

• ·         cut taxes (with a heavy tilt toward the rich)

• ·         waged two wars on the national credit card (one of which was against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and posed no serious threat to America)

• ·         passed a prescription drug benefit with no pay-for (the first entitlement in American history without a revenue source) and

• ·         deregulated Wall Street (which helped turn the American economy into a casino and touched off the Great Recession)

It is absolutely stunning how absent that history has been from the coverage of our current crisis. You can understand why the GOP doesn't want to remind folks of how they Screwed the Pooch. Indeed, they have a competing myth:  that “Washington went on a spending binge because that radical young President Barack Obama went crazy with the national credit card”. This, of course, is pure nonsense bull shit.  But too few Democrats - and almost no media commentators - have countered the mendacious right-wing storyline.

Just as bad as ignoring how we got here, we risk missing the story of precisely where the GOP wants to take us. Just what kind of country do the Republicans seek to build? Instead of seeing it as a ‘bargaining chip’, perhaps we should treat the GOP proposal(s) as Serious Governing Document(s).

Per Bob Greenstein [the widely respected president of the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities]:  The Boehner-GOP plan is "tantamount to a form of ‘class warfare.’ If enacted, it could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history."

Think about that.  “The greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history.”

As the economy teeters on the precipice of a double-dip recession, as millions of Americans search in vain for a job, as tens of millions of homeowners are underwater, as poverty soars and the middle class is hammered, the Speaker of the House is pushing a proposal that - let me repeat Greenstein's analysis one more time - “could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship in modern U.S. history.” They propose deep cuts in every domestic priority - from education for disabled children to food safety to homeland security to clean air and water, followed by painful cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

But Not One Dollar in New Revenue. 

Not One Corporate Loophole Closed.

Not One Billionaire Asked to Pay One Penny in Higher Taxes.

It has become a meme of the Right to accuse Obama and the Democrats of trying to remake America in the image of Europe. [That, of course, is silly as well as insulting to the people who gave us the Magna Carta and the Enlightenment, not to mention spaghetti.] But in whose image would the radical Republicans remake us? Certainly not in the image of the Founding Fathers. The Republicans are already seeking to make Swiss cheese out of Mr. Madison's masterpiece, littering the Constitution with amendments on budgeting, the line-item veto, gay marriage, abortion, school prayer, restricting birthright citizenship, and more.

In truth the GOP seeks a Banana Republic: a toxic blend of right-wing populism, anti-intellectualism, debt defaults, and an end to the ladder of economic opportunity. They would divide us into a few Haves and a lot of Have-Nots. And they would slowly crush the heart of progressive America - the remnants of a rising middle class created by Democratic economic policies of education and empowerment. All while preserving, protecting, and defending a tiny oligarchy of millionaires and billionaires.

The right wing should ditch the three-cornered hats and replace them with mirrored sunglasses.

They truly are Banana Republicans.

**The term ‘screw the pooch’ did not enter the popular lexicon until Tom Wolfe used it in his book about the space program, The Right Stuff, where it was used to describe a supposed mistake by astronaut Gus Grissom [the original phrase, BTW, was ‘you are fucking the dog’]. It is idiomatic to ‘screw up’ or ‘to fail in dramatic and ignominious fashion’.  Synonyms are ‘crash and burn’, ‘fuck up’, and ‘drop the ball’.

Just sayin’.