The House Republican budget stand-off continues, with the ultra-far-right House Freedom Caucus demanding even more than the $200 billion in cuts that regular old far-right Republicans have in mind. Why stop at $200 billion in misery to people reliant on programs like food stamps, Medicare, and Medicaid when you could spread even more pain around? The whole stalemate has some Republicans frustrated:
Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), a Budget Committee member, lamented Tuesday that the budget “should have been put to bed a long time ago.”
“It’s almost like we’re serving in the minority right now,” he said. “We just simply don’t know how to govern.”
You know what? When your whole ethos is that government doesn’t work, shouldn’t work, can’t work, you’re kind of setting yourselves up to not be able to govern. When you’ve spent years with a House majority just passing red meat for your base secure in the knowledge that it will be vetoed and you won’t have to live with the consequences of it actually becoming law, then you don’t get to be surprised that it’s difficult to draw back and pass bills that you believe in enough to want to see them as laws.
Congressional Republicans made their bed. Unfortunately, the rest of us have to lie in it, too.