Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Taking reality down a peg

When you have an adversarial relationship with reality, as leaders of the Republican party so often do, it becomes paramount to cast aspersions on anyone offering a glimpse of the truth. The latest target appears to be the CBO -- the non-partisan referee who makes all of the budget estimates for Congress:

House Republicans are in a pickle: One of their new rules says that new legislation must be paid for. But the health-care bill reduces the federal deficit by more than $100 billion over the next 10 years. Luckily, they've figured out an answer to their problem: They've decided to simplyexempt the repeal bill from the rules. That means they're beginning the 112th Congress by lifting their own rules in order to take a vote that will increase the deficit. Change we can believe in, and all that.

Republicans are aware that this looks, well, horrible. So they're trying to explain why their decision to lift the rule requiring fiscal responsibility is actually fiscally responsible. Majority Leader Eric Cantor got askedabout this, and he returned the reporter's serve with a volley of nonsense. "About the budget implications, I think most people understand that the CBO did the job it was asked to do by the then-Democrat majority, and it was really comparing apples to oranges,” Cantor said. “It talked about 10 years' worth of tax hikes and six years' worth of benefits. Everyone knows beyond the 10-year window, this bill has the potential to bankrupt this federal government as well as the states."

Aside from being factually incorrect about the accounting for health care reform, or more accurately "a lie", Cantor's argument also implies that the CBO can't be trusted -- that it simply follows the whims of the party who controls Congress. But now his party controls the House, and has this rule that nothing can go unpaid for, a rule that the CBO, presumably, has the responsibility to check. I assume he'll want us to trust the CBO's projections from now on.

When you subvert those who are trying to understand and describe reality, it makes it easier to win an argument by shouting louder than your opponent -- a specialty of the Tea Party movement. 

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