Its clear the Republicans really do hate this country

Tell me again the Republicans don’t hate this country.  How can you say someone doesn’t hate something when they deliberately inflict unnecessary pain on other human beings?  Note the bolded part.  When they talk about “household wealth” that includes the 401(k) not just the wealthy losing money.

“This is what a broken system looks like”

Opinion by
Paul Waldman
Columnist
Yesterday at 1:02 p.m. EDT

“If you want to know what a broken political system looks like, consider these new developments:

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open and suspend the debt ceiling until December 2022. While putting aside any policy disagreements by simply maintaining the status quo, the CR would avoid the twin looming crises of a government shutdown and the United States defaulting on its existing debt, which is what will happen if Congress does not act.

That CR must now pass the Senate, where not only will Republicans not vote for it, but they will filibuster it so that it dies.

The Post reports that former Republican treasury secretaries Steven Mnuchin and Hank Paulson recently held private discussions with current Secretary Janet L. Yellen and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), essentially begging McConnell not to create catastrophe by blocking a debt limit increase. Unfortunately, their intervention “did not resolve the matter and the U.S. is now racing toward a massive fiscal cliff with no clear resolution at hand.”

A Moody’s Analytics report found that a showdown over the debt ceiling would cost “up to 6 million jobs, wipe out as much as $15 trillion in household wealth, and send the unemployment rate surging to roughly 9 percent from around 5 percent,” as The Post puts it. The report’s authors called the potential consequences “cataclysmic,” saying it could be as bad as the Great Recession.

When Morning Consult and Politico asked Americans whom they would blame if the United States defaulted on its debt, 33 percent said they’d blame Democrats, 42 percent said they’d blame both parties equally, and only 16 percent said they’d blame Republicans.

It’s as though there are two roommates who don’t get along and one says, “How about we buy a new couch?” and the other responds, “I don’t really like your taste in furniture. How about instead we set fire to the building and kill everyone inside?”

This is madness.

That poll result represents something critical to understanding what’s happening right now. In order for government to operate in this insane way, you need two conditions. First, you need a massive lack of accountability, in which the most cynical actors know they can do just about whatever they want, no matter how damaging, without fear of suffering any political consequences.
Second, you need a party bound by no limits of responsibility or morality, a party perfectly happy to create crises, confusion and suffering if they think it will benefit them.

And that’s exactly what we have.

The fact that the debt ceiling is an arcane piece of law that most Americans don’t understand and tune out — it’s hardly as compelling as the status of Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend’s testicles — makes it an excellent vehicle for Republicans to sabotage Joe Biden’s presidency.

And if you think that poll has little meaning because the issue isn’t something most people think about, that’s exactly the point. If what the average voter thinks is Default sounds bad; Democrats are in charge; ergo it would probably be their fault, or at least the fault of “Washington,” that’s precisely what liberates Republicans to be as reckless as they like.

Their entire political strategy, from Washington down to every corner of the country, is to ensure that they never face accountability for what they do. That’s what ties the debt ceiling crisis to what’s happening in the states.

In Texas, for instance, Republicans can pass radical, unpopular laws on abortion and guns, then turn around and aggressively gerrymander state legislative and congressional districts so they hold on to power even though nearly all the state’s population growth is happening in communities of color and overwhelmingly Democratic cities.

Back in Washington, Republicans are happy for the system to remain broken, unresponsive and unable to perform basic functions without spinning toward disaster. They watch with glee as a small number of Democrats refuse to end the filibuster, leaving the power of sabotage in McConnell’s hands. They know that the worse things get, the better it is for them. The public doesn’t have a fine-grained understanding of what goes on in Congress or why things happen the way they do, so chaos and dysfunction will hurt the party in power.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Democrats can make some simple changes that would allow government to function. They can nix the filibuster, then pass laws ensuring that voters get representation. They can effectively nullify or eliminate the debt ceiling so there are no more default crises. That wouldn’t solve every problem, but it would go a long way toward making the system actually work.

But in order to do that, they have to put their foot down and say: Enough. This cannot go on. If they believe all their paeans to the wise and noble American people, they should believe that those people deserve better — and then have the courage to do something about it.”