The Florida legislature rejected Medicaid expansion. This is not a good precedent.

When Governor Rick Snyder announced his support for Medicaid expansion in Michigan, most Republicans (and Democrats) were shocked. Almost as shocked as they were when Florida Governor Rick Scott did the same, considering what a vocal opponent he’d been of Obamacare.

But credit to both Republicans for putting aside politics and doing what’s right for the citizens of their states. Too bad their Republican-controlled legislatures don’t feel the same way.

Last Friday, the Florida legislature adjourned after passing a budget that did not include the funds necessary to support Medicaid expansion. As reported by Sarah Kliff in the Washington Post, this leaves an estimated 1.3 million Floridians without coverage they might have obtained through Medicaid expansion.

The Michigan legislature is playing the same game, refusing to include Medicaid expansion in the state budget. As I’ve written here before, the states do bear a small financial responsibility for Medicaid expansion. But those costs will be incurred regardless of whether Medicaid expansion is adopted — and it’s a small price to pay in exchange for more than $1 billion in funding Medicaid expansion would bring into the state.

Not to mention that up to 730,000 uninsured Michiganders could finally get insurance under the expansion, improving public health and ultimately saving all of us the financial burden of caring for the uninsured.

Don’t let Michigan follow in Florida’s footsteps. Sign the petitions below and contact your representatives to let them know you support Medicaid expansion in Michigan.

• United Way for Southeastern Michigan
• Michigan Universal Health Care Access Network
• Michigan Democratic Party
• Find your state Representative
• Find your state Senator

Government small enough to let terrorists get away?

Getting out of bed this morning, Anne said, “I feel like everything that happened in Boston yesterday was a movie I watched.” It feels that way to me, too, especially given how the 24-hour cable news coverage puts the on-screen personalities in the position of having to fill every second with jabber, even when they have nothing to say. Any lull in the action is sure to be filled with endless speculation that starts with some version of, “Well, I don’t want to speculate here but…” followed by an in-depth foray into wild speculation based on little to no relevant facts. Journalism! Even Chris Hayes, who I admire greatly, seemed uncomfortable having to ask high school kids on the line if they ever smoked weed with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

A couple of things really struck me yesterday. The first was that, at a time when Republicans across the country are ranting and raving about making government smaller, yesterday was a clear example of why government needs to be big. I was amazed and impressed and, frankly, a bit skeeved out by how quickly and effectively law enforcement agencies across the board worked together and how much information they amassed in short order on Tsarnaev brothers. It goes to show you how much of our public life is preserved for posterity in digital form, most often without our knowledge, to be used against us if needed. And yet, without it, we’d still be wondering when these murderous kids would strike next. That sort of wondering and worrying is exactly what makes terrorism terrifying and the Godzilla stomp of our coordinated law enforcement in this case stopped it cold.

The other thing that struck me was the spontaneous outpouring of love and admiration and gratitude toward the Boston police and other members of law enforcement in the hours after Tsarnaev was captured. It did my heart good to see so much appreciation of members of a public employees union. Considering how much Republicans, especially in Michigan, have vilified union members, the celebrations in Boston last night were refreshing and a stark reminder that there’s no shame in being a member of a union. How shameful it is that our Michigan Republican lawmakers don’t value our public employees, especially the ones responsible for educating our children, as much as they do corporate profits.

[CC image credit: Dickelburs | Wikimedia Commons]

Maybe someone read them the U.S. Constitution?

North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis, a Republican, has ended any chance that a recent resolution that would pave the way to establishing an official state religion will see the light of day. Tillis said yesterday that he will not allow a vote on the resolution known as the “Defense of Religion Act”.

The bill was a response to an ACLU lawsuit regarding the reading of Christian prayers at official government functions. Sarah Preston, the policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, had this to say:

I would assume he (Tillis) didn’t like the attention it was getting, and it would distract from other issues that the House was working on. I hope that he decided that making a statement that North Carolina didn’t want to abide by the Constitution was the wrong thing for North Carolina to do.

Her colleague ACLU-NC Legal Director Chris Brook went further:

Despite the ACLU’s objections, and now a lawsuit, Commissioners have continued to pray in the name of Jesus.

“The bill sponsors fundamentally misunderstand constitutional law and the principles of the separation of powers that date back to the founding of this country,” ACLU-NC Legal Director Chris Brook told WBTV in response to the resolution.

That pesky U.S. Constitution. It gets in the way of overly evangelistic Christians ramming their religion down the throats of all Americans every time.

[Photo credit: Chris Savage | Eclectablog]

Hey! There are crazier Republicans than Michigan Republicans!

NOTE: this post has been updated HERE.

This is absolutely incredible. Republicans in North Carolina have introduced legislation that will allow them to set up their own state religion and ignore all federal laws.

If you think I’m joking, read on.

Here’s the salient part of the legislation:

The Constitution of the United States does not grant the federal government and does not grant the federal courts the power to determine what is or is not constitutional; therefore, by virtue of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the power to determine constitutionality and the proper interpretation and proper application of the Constitution is reserved to the states and to the people. Each state in the union is sovereign and may independently determine how that state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion.

See there? The Constitution doesn’t allow the federal courts to determine what is constitutional. This is going to come as an incredible shock to … everyone with a brain. The whole thing came about over a fight about whether Christian-specific prayers can be read at government meetings so this is very clearly about North Carolina establishing a state religion based on Christianity. But the implications go much further than that, of course. It means they are immune from any federal determinations regarding the constitutionality of … anything.

I guess these guys are as clueless about the Supremacy Clause as our Michigan Republicans. Good luck with that, gang.

[Photo credit: Chris Savage | Eclectablog]

When you’re giving Michele Bachmann a run for her money, you’re definitely going off of the rails on the Crazy Train

This past week, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann attempted to solidify her position as the “Craziest Person in Congress” with not one, not two, but THREE different comments. First, she was chased down a hallway by a CNN reporter trying to get her to explain her comment that the Obama’s live a lavish lifestyle that includes someone paid with taxpayer money to walk the First Dog Bo. It is, of course, not true.

Then she made the statement that Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, juvenile diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and Parkinson’s disease would all be cured by now if the federal government (of which she is a powerful member) hadn’t “created a cadre of overzealous regulators, excessive taxation and greedy litigators” that has prevented it.

And then she said that Obamacare must be stopped before it “literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens”. Yikes.

But now we have a new contender for the title of “Craziest Member of Congress”: Texas Republican Steve Stockman. Via MSNBC:

Woodruff was following Stockman the day last month the Violence Against Women Act [VAWA] finally passed the House. Stockman, who comes from a redder than red area of east Texas hates the bill. Hates it. Why?
“This is helping the liberals, this is horrible. Unbelievable. What really bothers – it’s called a women’s act, but then they have men dressed up as women, they count that. Change-gender, or whatever. How is that – how is that a woman?”

Here’s what my good friend Katherine Haenschen at the Burnt Orange report had to say:

The reauthorized VAWA — signed into law by President Obama earlier this month — was expanded to include Native Americans, immigrants, and LGBT Americans who are victims of domestic violence. Previously there was no dedicated funds for these communities.

That’s why Republicans fought the reauthorization of VAWA: because it included three communities that the GOP evidently doesn’t think worthy of protection against domestic violence.

Stockman is freaking out because he’s too ignorant to understand concepts such as gender expression or identity. His core constituents, the folks who turn out for a mid-summer Republican run-off, will only reward him for such intolerant, bigoted views. Have any other Texas Republicans condemned Stockman’s homophobic views? I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.

You heard it from Republican Steve Stockman, folks: passing tougher laws to prosecute perpetrators of violence against women is somehow “helping the liberals.” Personally I’d rather live in a world where stopping violence againts women is a human issue rather than a partisan one, but as long as sub-human life forms like Stockman get elected by Republican run-off voters, I guess that day is still a long way away.

The shift in public opinion on rights for our friends, neighbors and loved ones in the LGBT community is an unstoppable freight train. Young people today, those who will lead our nation in the not-so-distant future, by and large don’t give a damn who you love or what gender you identify with. They recognize that people come in many different flavors but we’re all humans worthy of dignity, being treated with respect, and, most importantly, being accorded the protections and rights that all Americans enjoy. It’s an unstoppable freight train that is about to derail the Crazy Train that people like Michele Bachmann and her new partner in ignorance and insanity, Texan Steve Stockman are driving.

It can’t happen fast enough for me.

[Public domain Crazy Words record image credit: Wikimedia Commons/Freimut Bahlo]

Ideology trumps intelligence in Florida

This week, a Florida Senate committee rejected the expansion of Medicaid to its poorest residents, a vote that followed a similar vote in the House and a surprise endorsement by its tea partying governor. Not only that, the bill’s Republican sponsor declared that he wants Florida out of the Medicaid business altogether:

A Florida Senate committee voted Monday against expanding Medicaid to roughly 1 million of the state’s poorest under the federal health overhaul and instead proposed a voucher plan that would require patients to pay premiums and co-pays.

“This will be the beginning of a transformation of the entire Medicaid system,” committee Chairman Sen. Joe Negron said. “My goal is that we will get out of the federal Medicaid system as we know it. Now, we can’t do that all at once, but we have an opportunity to begin that process.”

Negron wants the state to create a basic health insurance plan for the expanded Medicaid population and require recipients to pay a sliding scale premium based on their income. He suggested using Florida Healthy Kids, a managed care program that provides health insurance to low-income children, as the vehicle for delivering the new system.

What could possibly go wrong with a bunch of anti-government zealots running their own program to provide health care for needy families?

Governor Rick Scott is still lusting after that federal money for his state, however:

In a prepared statement shortly after the Senate vote, Scott appeared willing to consider alternatives proposed by lawmakers: “I am confident that the Legislature will do the right thing and find a way to protect taxpayers and the uninsured in our state while the new healthcare law provides 100 percent federal funding.”

These hypocritical tea party governors are all for ending federal spending on health insurance reform until there is something in it for them, it appears.

If Florida rejects this component of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it will be turning down over $50 billion in federal dollars to help provide health insurance coverage for a million of its most vulnerable citizens.

Here in Michigan, despite support by Governor Snyder and many Republican legislators, tea party groups across the state are still lobbying heavily to stop the health insurance exchange that will be set up under the ACA. On a recent post on the website for the Tea Party of West Michigan announcing an anti-Obamacare exchange lobbying day, one commenter had this to say (membership required for entry) about Republicans who aren’t toeing their anti-Obamacare line:

The scumbag elitist RINOS are no better than the Democrats. The Power of the office makes them believe they know better than the people what is good for us. Just more nannies. This is an abomination.

This is why the Republican Party has gone so off the rails on the Crazy Train. With politically-active extremists like this, there is no room for the sort of compromise that has been the hallmark of a functioning government. It’s their way or get-primaried-by-someone-even-more-extreme way. It may get them seats in the state House and Senate but, long term it’s going to kill any chance they have of being politically relevant on a broader stage.

Thanks for nothing, ladies

UPDATE: I mistakenly identified only nine women members of Congress that voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The number is actually TEN. Thanks to Kathy Kramer in the comments who pointed out my oversight.

The U.S. House of Representatives today passed the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 (VAWA) which had lapsed in 2011. Renewal of the VAWA was repeatedly voted down by Republicans for nearly two years. The version the House passed today was a comprehensive bill that extended protections to Native American women, lesbians & gays, and immigrants. It was passed after a watered-down Republican version was rejected. Because the bill they passed had already passed the Senate, it now goes to President Obama for his signature.

When the bill passed the Senate, every single woman in the Senate voted for it. However, among the 138 House members who voted against it today, all whom were Republicans, there were nine TEN women who joined them.

Here’s the list of female members of Congress who voted against protecting women from domestic violence and other forms of violence against women:

• Michele Bachman (MN-06)
• Diane Black (TN-06)
• Marsha Blackburn (TN-07)
• Renee Ellmers (NC-02)
• Virginia Foxx (NC-05)
• Vicky Hartlzer (MO-04)
• Cynthia Lummis (WY)
• Kristi Noem (SD)
• Martha Roby (AL-02)
• Ann Wagner (MO-02)

Let’s give these brave women a hand shall we? Rather than making sure that women in this country are protected from violence, they stayed loyal to the hateful ideology of the Republican Party, did their part in the Republican War on Women and tried to ensure that those protections would never come to be.

It’s word I’m using a lot today but I feel compelled to use it again: shameful.

P.S., my own anti-woman Congressman Tim Walberg (MI-07) joined his colleagues in voting against this important legislation. The rest of the list is HERE.

[Images by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog]

Sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s 2013…

The button shown on the right is the actual one that was worn by my mother when she marched, with me at her side, with 85,000 others in Chicago, during a rally for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1980. 59¢ was how much women in 1980 earned for every dollar a man made for the same job.

Today that number is 77¢. In 33 years, women have only gained 18¢ in their struggle for paycheck fairness. At that rate, to paraphrase Laurie Anderson, it will be the year 2055 before they make a buck. That is, unless Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski and Connecticut Congresswoman Rose DeLauro have anything to say about it.

The original Joint Resolution that became the ERA was submitted by Martha Griffiths (who later became Michigan’s Lt. Governor under Jim Blanchard) and was passed by both Houses of Congress in 1972. However, the ERA was never adopted, thanks mainly to efforts of notorious anti-women’s right firebrand, Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly galvanized conservatives against the passage of the ERA. After Congress passed it, it went to the states for ratification. Thanks to Schlafly’s efforts, the required 38 states did not ratify it by the 1980 deadline and the battle for the ERA ended, at least for a time. It has been recently brought back to life with a petition at petitions.whitehouse.gov. That petition, however, failed to secure enough signatures to warrant a response from the White House.

Not content to let die the movement to secure equal pay for equal work for women in the USA, the Paycheck Fairness Act has been introduced multiple times over the past decade. It came before the full Senate in 2009 and then again in 2010. Both times it was filibustered by Republicans who wouldn’t even allow it to come to a vote.

This week, along with Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Sen. Mikulski introduced it again. She has described the wage gap as part of the overall GOP War on Women:

It’s one bullet every paycheck when you’re discriminated against. Every time you get a paycheck and you’re making less than the next person, that’s a war against women.

During her speech at the Democratic National Convention, she had this to say, praising President Obama for his leadership on women’s equality:

These are our priorities. These are President Barack Obama’s priorities. We know that every issue is a women’s issue. And equal pay for equal work is an American issue. The 77 cents that women make for every dollar men earn makes a real difference to our families—families stretching to make every dollar count.

We are so proud that the first law signed by President Barack Obama was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. That first bill was about America’s first principles: equality, opportunity and prosperity. Republicans in the Senate blocked our efforts to go further and end pay discrimination once and for all. We, the women of the Senate, with President Obama by our side, will keep fighting—our shoulders square, our lipstick on—because you deserve equal pay for your hard work.

The fact that Republicans in Congress in 2012 could not find their way to making sure that women are paid the same amount as men is beyond astonishing. It shows just how much the Republican party has devolved. They promote women candidates, even putting a women on the ticket for the high office of Vice President as recently as 2008. Then, only two years later, voted en masse to prevent women from achieving paycheck equity. If you think there is no Republican Women, think again. And if you think that paycheck equity isn’t an issue, think again on that, too. Kaili Joy Gray at Daily Kos spells it out comprehensively and succinctly:

The wage gap is real. It exists in nearly every single profession. And contrary to Republican claims, it is not just because women choose lower-paying jobs. Or because “money is more important for men.” Even in those supposedly lower-paying jobs dominated by women, men still make more. In higher-paying professions, the gap is even worse, hitting CEOs the hardest.

Let’s finish with Congresswoman DeLauro’s statement on her reintroduction of this essential legislation this week:

“Equal pay is not just a problem for women, but for families, who are trying to pay their bills, trying to get ahead, trying to achieve the American Dream, and are getting a smaller paycheck than they have earned for their hard work,” said DeLauro, who has introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act for each of the past eight congresses. “The Paycheck Fairness Act will help the Equal Pay Act fulfill its intended objective, offer real protections to ensure equal pay for equal work, and see that women are paid the same as the other half of our nation’s workforce for the same job.”

They just didn’t Twitter those jpegs to your Pinterest blogs with good enough email Facebooks

Republicans have thought long and hard and have figured out why they lost the election in 2012. Although you dumb bunnies may think that it was because of their desire to benefit the very rich at the expense of our nation’s most vulnerable or because of their egregious War on Women and War on Minorities, you would, of course, be wrong. The reason they lost, according the Republicans, is because you people just didn’t understand their message well enough.

Here’s Republican National Committee Chair Reince Preibus announcing the GOP’s new 50-state strategy:

We must compete in every state and every region, building relationships with communities we haven’t before. We must develop the best technology with the help of the best minds—and train activists, volunteers, and candidates with the modern tools of a modern party … We can stand by our timeless principles—and articulate them in ways that are modern … relevant to our time and relatable to the majority of voters. {…}

And that, I believe, is how we’ll achieve a Republican renewal. That’s how we’ll grow. That’s how we’ll win … The good news is our principles are sound. We stand for opportunity and for liberty. Freedom is always a new idea—an ever-fresh, revolutionary idea … We can unite Americans around our values if we prove we can take them to a better place. So we must take our message to all voters and to every state.

See? The reason they got clobbered (again) is not because you thought the Republicans would continue to harm the economy, trample the poor and the elderly, and diminish women in our society. It’s that you didn’t realize they stand for opportunity and for liberty. Also, fresh freedom. Legitimate rape, slegitimate schlrape. You must have been too busy getting all your free Obama stuff to be paying attention, you takers.

Preibus isn’t the only one talking about this. Here’s failed Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan:

Ending a self-imposed silence about the November election, 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan said on Wednesday that he and presidential running mate Mitt Romney lost not because of ideas, but due to ineffective communication.

Ryan said Democratic President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden also prevailed because they did a better job with “technology and (voter) turnout.”

“We have to learn that,” said Ryan, chairman of the House of Representatives Budget Committee. “We have to fix that.”

See how dumb you guys are? Barack Obama and Joe Biden won because they LinkedIn to your YouTube tweets with faster Instagrams and twittered those jpegs to your Pinterest blogs with better email Facebooks. Or something. Anyway, it wasn’t the message, it was the medium that the GOP messed up. And, by the way, who let all those women and brown people vote, anyway?

Frankly, this is all music to my unabashedly liberal ears. If they think the solution is just more of the same only more so, have at it, kids. I’ll be there every step of the way to help you get out your message of higher taxes on the poor, tax breaks for the rich, destroying the social safety net, harming our senior citizens, and trampling the rights of women & minorities.

By the way, that 50-state strategy? That is SO 2005. Literally.

[Paul Ryan photo courtesy of Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog]

Go outside and play, children. Grown-ups are trying to govern.

There was a time when a handful of legislators could cast a political protest vote against raising the debt ceiling in this country and it didn’t make a bit of difference because, at the end of the day, everybody knew that the majority of lawmakers, including Republicans, would vote to raise it. They have to. They are paying for things they have already spent money on. Barack Obama did this as a Senator in 2006 and admits now that it “was just an example of a new senator making what is a political vote as opposed to doing what was important for the country”.

But what’s happening now is completely different. Republicans and conservatives are actually contemplating defaulting on the bills we owe. And that changes everything.

Make no mistake, this is about refusing to pay for things we have already spent money on. President Obama put it perfectly several times in a press conference yesterday:

The debt ceiling is not a question of authorizing more spending. Raising the debt ceiling does not authorize more spending. It simply allows the country to pay for spending that Congress has already committed to. These are bills that have already been racked up and we need to pay them.

So while I’m willing to compromise and find common ground over how to reduce our deficits, America cannot afford another debate with this Congress about whether or not they should pay the bills they’ve already racked up.

If congressional Republicans refuse to pay America’s bills on time, Social Security checks and veterans’ benefits will be delayed. We might not be able to pay our troops, or honor our contracts with small business owners. Food inspectors, air traffic controllers, specialists who track down loose nuclear material wouldn’t get their paychecks. Investors around the world will ask if the United States of America is, in fact, a safe bet. Markets could go haywire. Interest rates would spike for anybody who borrows money — every homeowner with a mortgage, every student with a college loan, every small business owner who wants to grow and hire. It would be a self-inflicted wound on the economy. It would slow down our growth, might tip us into recession, and ironically, would probably increase our deficit.

So to even entertain the idea of this happening — of the United States of America not paying its bills — is irresponsible. It’s absurd. As the Speaker said two years ago, it would be — and I’m quoting Speaker Boehner now — “a financial disaster, not only for us, but for the worldwide economy.”

So we’ve got to pay our bills…And they better choose quickly, because time is running short. The last time Republicans in Congress even flirted with this idea, our AAA credit rating was downgraded for the first time in our history; our businesses created the fewest jobs of any month in nearly the past three years; and, ironically, the whole fiasco actually added to the deficit.

He’s exactly right about the impact of the last debt ceiling game of chicken the Republicans tried to play. Have a look at now-legendary “Bikini Graph” from The Maddow Blog’s Steve Benen:

The red arrow marks May 2011 when Speaker John Boehner started the “absurd” talk about reneging on our country’s financial obligations.

Here are a couple more graphs from Bloomberg.

This one shows that same job growth data a bit more clearly:

Here is the consumer confidence data from Gallup:

When President Obama says the Republicans are threatening to throw us back into a recession, he’s not kidding. Just the threat of it nearly did in 2011 and we have the data to prove it.

The stupidity being displayed on this issue by conservatives is breathtaking. Redstate.com’s Erick Erickson actually seems to believe that the federal government won’t stop paying the bills, as if some magical fairy will flit down, sprinkle some pixie dust and all will be well except that Barack Obama won’t be President anymore:

I am in favor of not raising the debt ceiling unless the President and Democrats come up with meaningful spending cuts and reforms.

Contrary to a lot of the Democrats’ spin, the federal government will not default if the debt ceiling is not raised. Only if Little Timmy Geithner decides to not pay certain debts will the government default. It is his choice.

By the way, when you resort to calling administration officials things like “Little Timmy Geithner”, you disqualify yourself as a serious pundit. CNN, please take note of this.

The website Business Insider’s piece “The Republicans Are Already Making Some Terrifying Comments” is aptly titled:

[A] new report fro Politico’s Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei paints a picture of a House caucus eager to go past the brink, if that’s what it takes to force spending cuts.

Some of the lines from the report include:

– “The idea of allowing the country to default by refusing to increase the debt limit is getting more widespread and serious traction among House Republicans than people realize.”

– “Republican leadership officials, in a series of private meetings and conversations this past week, warned that the White House, much less the broader public, doesn’t understand how hard it will be to talk restive conservatives off the fiscal ledge.”

– “GOP officials said more than half of their members are prepared to allow default unless Obama agrees to dramatic cuts he has repeatedly said he opposes”

Not all of the commentary is off the record.

For example:

“For too long, the pitch was, we’ll deal with it next time,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a conservative from Utah. He said GOP lawmakers are prepared to shut things down or even default if Obama doesn’t bend on spending. “No one wants to default, but we are not going to continue to give the president a limitless credit card.”

This is exactly what happens when political novices are elected to Congress. They are handed a heavy responsibility and seem to have absolutely no clue what to do with it or how dangerous it is for them to handle it incorrectly. For the sake of the U.S economy and the sake of the world economy, we had better hope they get a clue.

Let’s let President Obama give it another shot, again from yesterday’s presser:

I just want to repeat — because I think sometimes the American people, understandably, aren’t following all the debates here in Washington — raising the debt ceiling does not authorize us to spend more. All it does is say that America will pay its bills. And we are not a dead-beat nation. And the consequences of us not paying our bills, as I outlined in my opening statement, would be disastrous.

The President seems disinclined to negotiate with Republicans at this point and, given the results of the November 2012 election, it’s clear he has a mandate not to do so. Here’s how he put it yesterday:

Republicans in Congress have two choices here: They can act responsibly, and pay America’s bills; or they can act irresponsibly, and put America through another economic crisis. But they will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy. The financial well-being of the American people is not leverage to be used. The full faith and credit of the United States of America is not a bargaining chip. {…}

What I will not do is to have that negotiation with a gun at the head of the American people — the threat that “unless we get our way, unless you gut Medicare or Medicaid, or otherwise slash things that the American people don’t believe should be slashed, that we’re going to threaten to wreck the entire economy.” That is not how historically this has been done. That’s not how we’re going to do it this time.

Republicans would be wise to understand that if we go off this cliff, and this is the true fiscal cliff in terms of what will happen to our economy, it will not be President Obama that Americans will blame. They may hope that Americans are too stupid to know who is putting our country at risk. But they are wrong.

We have a job to do in 2014 and that’s to put people in charge who actually have a clue and aren’t willing to trash our country’s position, economy and reputation simply to make some ideological point. It’s time to send the children back home.

[CC image credit via Pixabay]