Politics of Extortion II: GOP Readies New Govt Shutdown Threat for the Fall
Writing in Roll Call, Stan Collender, author of “The Guide to the Federal Budget,” calls out Republicans in Congress for rebooting their threat to shut down the federal government this fall by reopening the debate over the 2012 budget.
This move is especially irksome, says Collender, because the “House, Senate and White House all agreed to the spending level for fiscal 2012 when the president signed the Budget Control Act on Aug. 2, almost two months before the fiscal year starts.”
Rebooting shutdown threats now would appear to be political suicide. A spate of polls has found Congress’ approval ratings at all-time lows. For example, at the end of August, Rasmussen, which is notoriously in the bag for the GOP, just 6 percent of voters said Congress was doing a “good” or “excellent” job. (Five percent said “good.” Just 1 percent said “excellent”). Two-thirds said Congress was doing a “poor” job.
Nonetheless, says Collender, Republicans will be proposing a short-term continuing resolution, or CR, for the fall:
In Monday’s Republican presidential debate sponsored by CNN and the Republican Party front group, Tea Party Express, moderator Wolf Blitzter asked Rep. Ron Paul a hypothetical question. How would Paul and his followers handle it in their everyone-for-himself fantasy world, if a 30 year old man who had chosen not to buy insurance were to get sick and require long-term care. 
Update: It has come to our attention that a bunch of “scientists” have theorized that this photo of Rick Perry enjoying a corndog in front of a painting of a naked man is fake. Here is our position: We do agree that the science is not settled on this. But the idea that we would decide whether the photo was photoshopped based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet, to us, is just nonsense. After all, just because you have a group of scientists that have stood up and said here is the fact, Galileo got outvoted for a spell.
