And So It Begins....

John Boehner reaches for the Speaker's gavel.

Well, the 112th Congress is starting.  And I am already sick of their shit.

Basically, the House is going to spend the next two years doing three things.

First, they will engage in various efforts to sabotage the ACA health care reform.  Much of this will be largely symbolic, because repeal won't pass the Senate or the Presidential veto pen.  It is basic political theater, melodramatic readings of the Constitution, which will then be used as a napkin to wipe up the drool seeping from the lips of mouth breathing teatards.

Second, they will investigate.  And investigate.  And investigate.  Now, maybe there is something to investigate out there.  Salazar doesn't strike me as the purest of public servants, for instance.  But there is no whiff of scandal from the executive branch to this point.  The pseudo scandals of the Clinton era at least had some basis in fact.  Castle Grande really existed.  This is a far cry from the birth certificate nonsense we see today.

Third, they will fundraise.  Cantor and Boehner have already set a very relaxed work week and work year.  Congress will spend less time legislating than previously.

None of this is remotely surprising.  The GOP does not believe in government.  And given the way they govern, it is understandable why they believe that.

So, they will attempt to undermine ACA before it even really takes effect.  Of course, they will leave certain parts in place that are popular, like keeping kids on parent's plans until they are 25 or prohibiting insurance denial because of pre-existing conditions.  Which is fine, but what they WILL undo will remove the cost containment aspects of ACA from the bill.

I saw an interesting post over at Ezra Klein's place about how real income has been stagnant - no kidding - but real compensation has actually risen.  Because compensation includes health care costs.

So the rising cost of health care has done two things: busted the federal budget and busted the family budget.

The GOP's response to the first real effort to fix these problems?  Overturn it.  Without letting it get a chance to work.  The more ACA gets attacked from the Right, the more I anticipate it will start to look good.

The investigations will likely lead nowhere.  When Dan Burton first started probing into Travelgate and Vince Foster's suicide, there was little alternative to the traditional media's "Well, one side says Vince Foster committed suicide, but some say Hillary killed him with her lesbian lover, Janet Reno.  Opinions differ."  Now, you can count on some push back when Issa goes after Michelle's vegetable garden.

Some enterprising Internet scribe should keep a running tally of the amount of money the GOP wastes investigating non-scandals and convert those into dialysis sessions or MRIs.

And the relaxed work week will not go unnoticed either.

I share the opinion of Daniel Larison that the GOP returned to power too quickly.  They have not learned their lesson.  They won the House because of two main reasons:

First, the electorate was more conservative than it was in 2006 and 2008.  The Daily Kos view is that Obama voters were dispirited over not getting a public option.  Maybe.  More likely is that outrage is much better at getting people to the polls.  Democrats were more outraged in 2006 and 2008, Republicans were more outraged in 2010.

Second, people were upset at the state of the economy and what they perceived as the lack of government action on their behalf.  The single unanswerable bumpersticker of the last two years was: "Where's MY bailout."

This is what created Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor.

Their response?  Re-fight HCR from the Right, which is NOT a majority position and will re-outrage Democrats.  Attack Obama over ticky-tack shit like the made up cost of his trip to India which will re-outrage Democrats.

And what they will NOT do is address the economic insecurity of the American people.

If the Democrats are smart - and we know that is very much in dispute - Harry Reid should see how many bills he can get through on mortgage reform and unemployment insurance, so that they can die in the House.

Finally, the real question about the 112th Congress is how insane they will be.  The greatest insanity being floated right now is refusing to raise the debt ceiling.

Obama - not a flunky, certainly not a bloviating Senator - should begin educating the populace RIGHT NOW about the dangers of playing chicken with the debt ceiling.  Failure to raise the debt ceiling will make 2008 look like the good old days.  The financial world will grind to a halt.  Unemployment will skyrocket even higher.  The Great Recession becomes the Great Depression.

Obama has been pretty piss-poor about shaping the narrative ahead of events.  He cannot cede the narrative to Michelle Bachmann and Jim DeMint.

Clinton was less personally popular than Obama at comparable points in their administration.  Obama retains more credibility than anyone in Congress among the public at large.  He needs to use that to insure that the GOP doesn't Katrina the whole damned country, and he needs to accept the arrows of GOP investigations like a martyr, with each piercing he should ask, "Is that the best you've got?"

My guess is that it won't take long for those fabled "independent voters" to remember why they tired of the GOP in the first place.

Update: Saw this cross posting at Kos: