I will never understand the person who insists the American political system is boring, or even more incredible, that it does not affect their day to day lives. The Congress directly affects millions of Americans every single day. There are no important elections being held in 2015, this year is political equivalent of the Saturday round at the Masters Golf Tournament, called moving day, you don’t win or lose on Saturday, but how you perform greatly affects the final outcome.
The next two years we will have Republican majorities in both the House and Senate and if the new majority leaders are to be believed, they will work for some modicum of bipartisanship and hopefully get some bills to President Obama’s desk that he will sign into law. As for myself, I do not believe that one tiny bit. There is no upside in today’s Republican Party for any type of agreement with the president. The current political well has been so thoroughly poisoned that any GOP lawmaker would be branded a traitor or worse if they voted for a law the president agreed with enough to sign into law.
Any issue, faux scandal or urban myth, true or not, that keeps the level of fear and loathing at a high level in the Republican base is good for their party as a whole. Indeed, the political model for this goes back to FDR and the New Deal. Republicans are still trying to gut Social Security, albeit a bit more indirectly, as befits 21st century politics. Indeed, the very first vote in the Republican led 114th Congress was a rule change to weaken Social Security. Not exactly a path to compromise.
Past Republican bogeymen have included communists, feminists, hippies, Vietnam War protestors, abortion rights advocates, gays, immigrants, Muslims, welfare recipients and most recently, people who appreciate having affordable medical insurance. Democrats are permanent members of the bogeyman club; so do not expect any legislation that in any way appeals to the aforementioned persona non grata.
So what can we expect from the House and Senate majorities in the next couple of years? First and foremost, lots more Obamacare repeal votes. These are red meat for the base, they are a proven right wing donation cash cow and the issue still gets out the vote. Republican politicians will still use the ACA to scare and motivate their base. They have no plan to replace the law, because meaningless repeal votes are all that are needed to succeed.
We will also hear a lot about job creation, which in the new Republican congress will manifest itself in two ways, tax cuts for the “job creators” (the 1%, Wall Street and corporations) and a rollback of regulations and restrictions on how much poison is allowed to be put into our air, water and environment. Republicans will pay for the tax cuts by reducing benefits for the moocher class. Americans in need of the most basic services, food, shelter and a hand up when they are down will find the social safety net trimmed considerably.
Four words to look for in the upcoming debates over tax policy and budgets are “dynamic scoring” and “static scoring”. The Congressional Budget Office uses currently uses reality based static scoring to determine if proposed legislation will generate more or less revenue than the laws it replaces. Conservatives like dynamic scoring because they can manipulate facts to pretend their tax plans will bring in more revenue than actual reality has proven to be true. Dynamic scoring is what gave us the trickle-down theory, famously dubbed voodoo economics by the 41st president of the United States, George H.W. Bush.
If you would like to see the real world effects of dynamic scoring, look no further than Kansas, currently undergoing a crippling economic crisis brought on by the Republican tax cuts, signed into law by Republican governor Sam Brownback. Tax cuts did not bring in more revenue or create jobs.
As if that were not enough political drama for the next two years, now toss in the presidential ambitions of Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio and we have the makings of a true political spectacle. Pass the popcorn, I can hardly wait for the show to begin.